Coolest Baby Einstein Caterpillar First Birthday Cake

When we decided to do a Baby Einstein themed first birthday party for our son, my sister and I of course consulted www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com for ideas. We found great ideas for my older son’s 2nd birthday (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake) here.

We used a large Wilton sheet cake pan to make the base. We used a foam board to build the cake on, so it could be thrown away afterward. We used the Wilton Mini Wonder Mold cake pan for the caterpillar segments (about 1/2 cup cake batter in each pan works well). We made the cakes the night before and decorated the morning of the party.

We frosted all the cake parts using Wilton’s buttercream icing recipe, substituting butter flavored Crisco for the butter and vanilla Silk for the milk, since our older son is allergic. We used Wilton gel coloring for each color (blue and green for turquoise). We iced the segments before putting them on the cake. We used Kleenex Viva paper towels (yes, it must be Viva) to smooth the base and to texturize the caterpillar. We used leftover icing to line the outer edges of the cake. We piped yellow icing between the segments for the feet.

The antennae were pipe cleaner and pom poms. The face we drew with black decorator icing and pink pom poms for the cheeks.

For the lettering, we used foam letter stickers on colored card stock cut out with pinking shears and attached to wooden skewers.

Thanks for all the other submissions. They are all great, with great ideas!