The Very Hungry Caterpillar Party {Tutorial}

I got to make another Very Hungry Caterpillar cake! This one was for my BFF's little girl who has just turned one.

This cake  is completely free of any fondant. Four layers of moist chocolate cake (recipe) are sandwiched together with creamy chocolate icing, then covered in vanilla buttercream.

The fruit and caterpillars on the cake are vanilla sugar cookies decorated with royal icing, then hand painted to add details.

 The cake has 1 apple, 2 pears, 3 plumbs, 4 strawberries and 5 oranges on it. As well as both a tiny little caterpillar and a big fat one.

The Eric Carle style spots are made by stencilling coloured buttercream on to the cake.

Start with a smooth buttercream finish on the cake which has been well chilled in the fridge.

You will need a stencil (I made mine myself by cutting a few holes in a plastic sheet), a small spatula and various colours of buttercream.

Load the back of your spatula with a little bit of buttercream - scoop up a bit of one colour, then a bit of a second. Holding the stencil firmly against the cake, spread the buttercream over one of the holes, making sure you fill the hole right up to the edges and get a reasonably smooth finish. Clean off the spatula, load it with another two colours of buttercream, and spread it over the next hole in the stencil.

Repeat until all the holes are filled with different colours and carefully lift the stencil away from the cake.

Shift the stencil along and repeat until the whole cake is covered.

You can get different effects by loading the buttercream onto the spatula in different ways and by changing the angle of the spatula as you spread the buttercream onto the cake.

I made a few spots on my counter top to better demonstrate the technique (it was easier to take photos).

I did not make this cake on my own, my BFF did a lot of the work. The Birthday Girl lent a hand too!

Can you believe this is her first time decorating cookies?

Once the royal icing was fully set on the cookies, I hand painted the details on with food colour gel.

The cookies were then attached to the cake with royal icing.

The whole party was set around The Very Hungry Caterpillar theme. This is the invitation we made.

And the Birthday Girl's outfit. The design on the top is drawn on with fabric markers. The tutu is made from strips of organza.

The decorations were all red and green, and mostly spotty. The food was all based on foods that the Hungry Caterpillar ate in the book. Except for the mini sandwiches - they make up a caterpillar, with a tomato for his head. Paper plate caterpillars crawled all around the room, and the party bags were finished with pictures of the butterfly he becomes. Guests were also given fruit badges to wear, which split them all into teams for various party games (you can see some of them on the green plate on the right).

This is me with the Birthday Girl - she is telling us that she is ONE!

She got the entire top tier of the cake to 'smash'. She had a great time pulling it apart and eating it!

Happy Birthday sweet girl!!

Thank you to my BFF for letting me help with all your party preparations, I had a wonderful time, and I think we make a great team!