The first step of making this Veggie Tales Birthday Cake was drawing out a pattern, including the eyes, nose, and mouth. Start with a piece of paper that is the same size as your cake pan as this helps you think through how to cut and piece together the cake to make the shapes. I used a 9×13 pan for Larry, using the left over cut outs to add the curves to his top and bottom, and an 8” round for Bob.
Once the cake was baked I cut the pieces off of Larry and put the remnants in the freezer for easier carving. I put all of Bob in the freeze prior to carving his shape. When you are ready to sculpt, just lay your precut pattern on top of the cake and cut the shape using a serrated knife. Be sure to have all your icing ready when you start to put the cakes together. Red icing is hard to do and it took a whole bottle of food coloring and Wilton’s “Cars” red! The Green took a whole bottle too.
Each cake will need its own cake board (you may want to cut the boards into the correct shapes first so that they will fit inside your transport box. I tried to do it afterwards and was extremely lucky it didn’t mess up my cakes!) Crumb coat your cakes. I added the small pieces to Larry’s top and bottom using the crumb coat as my glue. Any unevenness can be corrected with the finial frosting. Go ahead and completely frost them both, leaving only the crumb coat where Bob’s green top will go. I had held back a lighter shade of green to use on Bob’s head and used the large flower making tip and an icing bag to apply to Bob’s top and stem.
It is a good idea to make additional patterns for the eyes, pupils, mouths, noses, and Larry’s tooth. I made a small batch of white and black marshmallow fondant. Just roll and cut out the shapes for each. I found myself referring back to my large pattern/drawing for the placement of the fondant pieces.
The hardest part was the noses! After I tried three times to sculpt cake and frost it, only to have the nose crumble in my hands, I figured out a solution. I used a piece of plastic wrap and slathered frosting on it and put just a hard cake corner from Larry’s pan in the middle, wrapped it up to form a ball in the appropriate size and stuck it in the fridge to firm up. Once firm unwrap it enough to place it on the face and press it down a little to stick. DONE!
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