Cute Worm Bug Party Cake

My daughter just turned 6. We can barely believe it, the years have gone so fast, yet they also seem to have been a loooong 6 yrs – lol. She asked for a “Worm Party”. Given that this is probably the last year we’ll get away with something non- pink-sparklie-girlie, I took the ball and ran with it! She’d seen a version of this cute Worm Bug party cake in Debbie Brown’s ‘Gorgeous & Gruesome Cakes’ book at the library and loved it. I did a slightly more girly version by adding in flowers and a bow on one of the worms heads.

Needed:

White, brown and green fondant

Food coloring for other colors (black for the eyes, yellow for the flower centers, a bow color for 1 worm)

Skewers and toothpicks for the worms to stay on

4 doweling cake rods for the top tier to sit on

2mm thin cake board for the top cake to sit on

Regular cake board for the bottom cake

Rolling Pin

Icing (powdered) sugar

A star nozzle (or one with lots of teeth) for the grass texturing.

The lower cake was a Moist Chocolate Crazy Cakes (this recipe is by Shirley Corriher and is available online). I love this recipe as it gives a good sturdy cake for holding a 2^nd tier and all the fondant. Everyone always wants the recipe afterwards too, it’s a dark, rich cake and uses no eggs or butter. I used a chocolate cream cheese filling in the middle of it. I baked 1 cake of the recipe and a 2^nd one at 2 x the recipe to get the height (sandwiching them together with the filling). Chocolate cream cheese filling is easy, just a tablespoon or 2 of butter, a pot of cream cheese and a tablespoon of cocoa or two. It’s SO yummy The top tier was a vanilla chocolate marbled cake. This was filled with the same filling as above. I just used the tins I had and ignored all the cake decorator’s instructions (since I don’t use proper tools).

I made the worms in advance to save on time. Just rolls of fondant (differing sizes) with a little Tylose powder to stiffen up a bit and the color I used was AmeriColor’s Ivory with a hint of red to make it pinker. Obviously if doing these in advance, you need to use the cake tins you’re going to use as a guide – as once the worms are set, they will break if you try to make them mold in to the side of the cake.

I just stacked the 2 tins as if they were the finished cake to do this and left them to dry. You’ll need a skewer for the top worm, running all the way through (make sure it doesn’t some out the top and can be seen)! I made a little mauve bow for one worms head and the eyes are all fondant too. I used a flower cutter to make the fondant flowers and used a yellow gel pen for their centers. I left these to dry on the cake tins so they didn’t stick together in jar.

I won’t give full instructions here as that will breach the original creator’s copyright. I only had a photocopy of the picture anyway so used my own creativity. But what I used for the grass is just green fondant and a star nozzle (or a toothed nozzle) to texture it and lift it up in places. The brown fondant is chocolate flavored which was nice. To texture the brown dirt I used a piece of the doweling and rolled it about all over it. The apple is just fondant rolled in to a fat sausage shape then I rolled my fingers in the center and used a skewer to texture it with bites. Placed 2 thinly rolled bits of green fondant for the skin. Attached on with a bit of water as glue. I used the brown fondant to make a stalk and stamen.

To stack the cakes, I placed the bottom cake on first, the brown fondant round it then the grass and textured before it dried out. I used the cake board as a guide to cut around the grass and a plate a similar size to the cake to make the inner circle (no use wasting icing under the cake). I cut the circle in one spot to place around the cake. Then I placed a doweling rod in the lower cake and used a pencil to mark where I needed to cut it down to with a saw. Used that as a guide for the others and placed in the cake with the thin board on top. Then repeated this process above for the 2^nd tier.

It was pretty quick to do since I’d done the worms in advance. Probably around 4 hrs. The guests were pretty impressed it was homemade!

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