To make the cake, prepare your box cake mix according to the instructions. Bake the cake divided amongst two small cake pans, approximately 6 inches in diameter, five cupcakes, and two mini cupcakes.

Bake all of these until a toothpick inserted into the center of each one comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow your cake to completely cool on a wire cooling rack.

To make vanilla buttercream, in a mixing bowl combine vegetable Crisco and soft butter. Beat on medium speed until the mixture is creamy.

Once combine, add powdered sugar, salt, vanilla, and enough milk to make it moist. Mix together the mixture until your frosting comes together.

If you want it to be a little thicker, add a little more powdered sugar. For thinner frosting, add a little bit more milk. Keep in mind that a little bit of milk can go a long way.

Use food coloring to dye your vanilla buttercream as desired for your teddy bear cake. Some ideas include dying some frosting brown or tan for the fur of the teddy bear. Or if you are celebrating a boy baby shower, perhaps you want the teddy bear to be blue, or half blue accents. For a girl birthday or baby shower, and some pink to the teddy bear.

Make delicious chocolate buttercream, begin by allowing your butter to soften at room temperature. Once it is soft, add your butter to the mixer and beat it until creamy.

Next add powdered sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, salt, milk, and chocolate syrup if desired. Mix until all of your ingredients our combined. Then proceed to frost your cooled cake.

To assemble your cake, lay out your cake and your serving platter. Cut off approximately ¼ of two cupcakes using a circle cutter to use the cupcakes as feet. This allows the feet to fit snuggly against the bear's body. then, we removed one of the cupcake tops and used the puffy section for our bear's nose. This gives it a nice raised knows, that you can easily decorate.

You can also cut out a portion of the bear's body so the head sets snugly against the body if desired. Or you can simply take the two portions of cake together with frosting and tuck the cupcakes into the crack for arms.

Add a thin layer of frosting to the top and sides of your cake. Make sure to add whatever color you intend to frost that area with. This thin layer will help to prevent your cake from crumbling and will help your next layer of frosting to stick to the cake better.

Next, choose whatever color you want for the paws, feet, ears, nose, and even belly if desired. Take a knife and spread the frosting over this area so that it is nicely covered. Keep in mind that in this section the frosting will show through on your finished teddy bear.

Next, choose your desired frosting tip and fill your piping bag with frosting. Pipe the sides of your teddy bear first sticking the pieces together with frosting. Then pipe the frosting to cover all of the sides of your cake.

When the sides of your cake are covered in frosting, it’s time to start decorating on the top of the teddy bear. Working from the outside in, pipe the frosting to cover the teddy bear cake as desired. For a reference on how to do this, check out the video in the recipe card below.

When your entire teddy bear is covered, leaving the paws and part of the ears uncovered, it is time to add your face.

To design the face, we used black licorice coins, with a hole cut out, and white chocolate chips inserted for the eyes. You can then place these eyes as desired. We also decided to pipe our nose and mouth onto the teddy bear.

There are so many different ways you can go about creating the face for your teddy bear, you can simply die your frosting and pipe the entire face so that it comes out just how you want it. Or you can buy candy eyes and noses for your bear from your local craft store.

The video in a recipe card below will walk you through the step-by-step process with a visual aid of how we decorated our teddy bear cake. However, feel free to get creative, and make whatever changes to decorate your teddy bear cake just as you want it.