Coolest 3D Plankton Cake

My wife’s co-worker asked me to make a cake for her grandson’s eighth birthday, he wanted a 3D Plankton cake from the Spongebob Squarepants cartoon. I had about a month to design it.

I decided to make a 3D tier cake with Plankton coming out of the top of his restaurant called the Chum Bucket. I started by making his arms and antenna using Wilton Shape-N-Amaze modeling dough wrapping it around wooden cake dowels with pieces of a coffee stirer for the flat parts. I did this a couple of days before I made the cake so it would harden.

I made the Chum Bucket part of the cake from two 8″ × 3″ round cakes, one yellow and one chocolate, stacked and carved into the bucket shape. For Plankton I made a 10″ × 3″ round yellow cake that I cut two 4 3/4″ smaller cakes out of. I used Pillsbury boxed cake mix for the cakes. I iced the bucket with Pillsbury frosting tinted grey with Wilton icing coloring. I piped on the Chum Bucket name, doors, and bucket handle before air brushing it with black and orange food coloring to make it look like a beat up old bucket before piping the computer monitor and Mr. Krabs character.

For Plankton I stacked the two small cakes, rounded the top, icing it green and piped on the eye and mouth. I used #1, #2 and #3 round icing tips. I inserted three wooden dowels in the bucket to support Plankton on a round cardboard circle. After stacking the two parts I inserted a dowel down through both tiers. I added Swedish Fish, gummie worms and Krabby Patties around the top of the bucket as the chum. I used ground up Nilla Wafers and Nerds candy around the base of the cake to make it look like sand and coral. The final step was to insert the arms and antenna.

This was a challenging but fun cake to make.

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