This Very Hungry Caterpillar cake was my first creation for a stranger. Someone emailed a picture making a very hungry caterpillar cake showing a large cake for the caterpillar’s head and a trail of cupcakes. They asked if I could do something similar.
I had more icing sugar than I would need but I know this stuff doesn’t go as far as you think if you accidentally add too much liquid and I didn’t want any last minute panics. I made a detailed list of everything I’d need for the sponge, the cupcakes, two types of icing. I calculated how much of everything would be needed.
Having a Very Hungry Caterpillar cake for children’s birthday parties are very popular nowadays. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a children’s book by Eric Carle that celebrated it’s 40th anniversary in 2009. There has therefore been lots of merchandise around including party plates and stuff. The little girl in question was having a Very Hungry Caterpillar themed 4th birthday party with matching tablecloth, napkins etc and of course cake.
Making Very Hungry Caterpillar Cake
To make sure the cake was as fresh as possible meant starting as late as feasible. The sponge must be cool before icing so I made that on Thursday afternoon. On Friday I cut off pieces to make it more like the caterpillar’s head shape. Then I wrapped these in baking parchment and plastic and would put them in the freezer for 30 minutes before covering with buttercream. This stops the surface crumbling as icing is spread over the surface.
I made two types of cupcake, vanilla and chocolate. Then I made buttercream icing and things started to pan out different to what I’d planned…
What’s this? Urrrgh!
You’ll see above that the green icing does not look as deep green as The Caterpillar. The “red” icing refused to go any shade deeper than disgusting bubble gum pink and I’d added so much food colouring it tasted bitter. Worthy only of the bin. The problem, I discovered after consulting Twitters was using liquid food colouring from the supermarket. This does not contain as much pigment as powder or gel food colourings from specialist suppliers.
5.30pm Friday. I have all the actual cake finished but none of the decorating because I can’t make my icing the right colour.
I whizz Benny Hill style around Waitrose in South Woodford and then the big Sainsburys at Chingford because Waitrose was hopeless. I phoned the lovely Claire from Things We Make whilst in the shop. She suggests ready made red fondant icing by Dr Oetker.
My husband is making cupcake trays. This way I can transport my cupcakes without rattling them about (remember I’ve had no time to order stuff like this).
I have four packs of Dr Oetker ready to roll red icing each containing 125g of fondant in four colours. I used most of the red fondant and over half of the yellow, about a quarter of the green but only a little bit of black. The sponge cake was filled with buttercream and raspberry jam.
My first time covering a sponge cake with ready to roll fondant icing. It was easier than I expected and although not satisfied with the smoothness, I felt I’d done a good job for a newbie. I did a layer of yellow first to give a smoother finish. I had my Grandma Kitty’s icing scraper to help! (middle row, right).
Fortunately, this Dr Oetker kit gave me the colours I needed. I would have liked the green to be a little deeper but with time short didn’t risk fiddling with food colouring. I followed pack instructions to mix green, black and red to create brown for the nose, antennae and feet. I made paper templates to get the shapes/sizes of the eyes and nose right.
To trail behind the head of the Very Hungry Caterpillar Cake, I covered cupcakes with the green buttercream I had coloured already. Then topped it with circles of the Dr Oetker green fondant cut out with a crinkly cutter. I decorated green cupcakes with a chocolate button each and some bobbles of brown fondant.
The cupcakes had chocolate icing and were decorated with more green fondant circles, chocolate buttons and chopped up dolly mixtures. Both types of cupcake were in brown muffin cases from Asda. I’d started decorating the cupcakes before I went to bed but finished them in the morning.
The Caterpillar was to be arranged on a series of six silver cake boards that had been painted with white and dark chocolate. I didn’t have time to acquire anything larger.
A close up of the finished green (vanilla) cupcakes
A close up of the caterpillar’s head.
The Caterpillar head was sitting on baking parchment so I could lift it in and out of it’s cake box easily. My husband and Ted were packed off to a local art shop in the morning to buy a scalpel so that I could cut the parchment away when it was arranged on the boards with the cupcakes.
All packed up and ready to go.
All that remained was to pack the Very Hungry Caterpillar Cake in the car, deliver the cakes and set them all up on the boards at the table. The Caterpillar antennae you can see close up above were just brown fondant wrapped around cocktail sticks. In retrospect I think these were a little small and I wish I’d done bigger antennae using cut down wooden skewers.
@meeta – yes I love Brown Bear Brown Bear too
@faithy – thank you, boards were just painted with melten chocolate using a silicon pastry brush
@bethie @sprinklebakes @amusebouche UK – thank you!
@heavenlyh – thanks for that link, I definitely need boxes and good luck with your italian meringues
@natalie – Since I've started using gel food colouring, I cannot believe the difference in the pigmentation and the quality of hue for stuff like blue. I bought a pack of 8 pots of gel colouring from Lakeland but I forget what make they are. They were about 8 pounds for the box but you only need tiny bit on the end of a cocktail stick so they should last for ages.
Wow, well done! The caterpillar looks amazing. I had a similar food colouring problem at Christmas. I was told on my cupcake course to never use the shop bought colouring as it's rubbish but I didn't think I had time to buy any of the good stuff. I ended up making Holly leaves that reminded me of chewing gum (not that appetising) so I had to paint them all with some of the good stuff that I ended up rushing out to buy. Having used the quality colouring since I can say there really is no comparison. Either the gels or the liquids from a good company like Sugarflair are incredibly potent and therefore don't affect the flavour.
Job well done – congrats!