I'm making a lady bug cake for my niece's first birthday and the theme is lady bug. I'm going to make a 6" lady bug using the ball pan for the baby to eat and cupcakes for everyone else. I'm making chocolate and vanilla cup cakes with buttercream frosting and wanted to put a lady bug on top. So heres what i'm thinking. I have a cookie cutter thats the perfect size circle for the ladybugs so I was wondering if I could make like a sheet of royal icing and then cut that somehow with the cookie cutter but I don't know if it will just shatter.

Any thoughts or other ideas? Thanks in advance MW.

Try the new Wilton sugar sheets.

Are you wanting them to be flat? The royal icing sheet/cutter is not going to work, no - but why not just pipe balls?

I'd make them out of fondant, RI and BC?, would be worried they would melt on me (we have very humid weather at times)

Red M&Ms with spots and a head piped on make cute ladybugs.

i made ladybugs out of a bag of hershey's special dark pieces. just like M&M's but they are all red, maroon and brown colored. so you'll get more of the red you need. used an edible food marker to draw the face and dots on

If you're wanting them to be royal icing discs, you can use cardstock (or if you'd like it to be reusable, use one of those cutting mats-found near the cutting boards at Wal~Mart) and punch or cut out the size holes you'd like, making it a stencil. Then, smear icing across stencil, remove stencil and leave discs to dry.

Making one full sheet of royal then using a cutter, as you mentioned, would probably shatter. You can spread out the royal. Allow it to set a bit. Then, take your cutter and press into it so that they can be removed easily once dry. To make it a bit easier to remove, you could, when the cutter is pressed in, remove the excess from the outer area of the cutter with a damp brush.

Thanks for the ideas. I'm looking to do a flat lady bug about the circumference of the cupcake. We'll see what happens. I don't have to make these until the end of July!

What about icing the cupcakes red, then using black BC or RI for the details? Or, cut a red fondant circle, then detail. Ice cc with a bit of BC to attach to top.