Caterpillar Baby Shower Cake
by Crystal Shattuck
(Tonawanda, NY, USA)
Caterpillar Baby Shower Cake
I made this gigantic cake for my sister-in-law's baby shower. I made three, 12 inch diameter, round cakes and carved them into the shape of
The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I filled and covered each cake with buttercream frosting, then covered it with a pale green fondant and painted it with green gel icing tint. The face is a rich, red-colored buttercream frosting, with eyes, nose and mouth piped on. Using a flower tip (#24 I think) I covered the caterpillar's belly in yellow buttercream frosting. Using dark green frosting, I piped lines on the body for wrinkles and to hide the seams between cakes. With the same dark green frosting, using tip #24, I piped a trim around the base of cake at green fondant edge. The night before; I used royal icing to make feet (with toothpicks inserted for support when inserted into belly) & multi-colored sticks to represent the colored hairs on the caterpillar's back.
A funny story:
My mother-in-law is a sugar-aholic. She was watching and helping when I was assembling the cake. Whenever she thought I was not looking, she would steal the broken royal icing sticks I made for the caterpillar's back. But to her surprise, she bit on one very hard one. She says "Ow, Crystal, this one is hard and tastes awful!" I told her "Claire, I put toothpicks in the bag too." We all laughed very hard...
