The Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday Cake - Nut Free

My baby turns one tomorrow.

Sigh.

Family came in town last weekend to celebrate his first birthday early, so I had lots of help from my mom & sister in making this precious cake idea I found and pinned on my Pinterest board.  The inspiration came from Coco Cake Land's fabulous Hungry Caterpillar Cupcake Party Train.  Yes, do stop by her site and drool over her gorgeous cakes.  You know you want to.

How We Did it

I always make my children's birthday cakes because our son has nut allergies.  Nuts are all over a bakery, so most people with nut allergies choose not to eat from bakeries.  Fortunately, my mom and sister are great at decorating cakes and have taught me quite a bit about it since my son was diagnosed with a nut allergy as a toddler.

We often make cakes with marshmallow fondant, but skipped it this time because of time.  I can show you our technique for making relatively smooth cakes without messing with fondant.

The Nut Free Modifications

We used a Betty Crocker boxed cake mix that is safe for nut allergies (read every label, every time!).

I followed this recipe for homemade butter cream frosting, adding extra butter flavoring to keep it from tasting like Crisco.  I do prefer to use Crisco instead of butter because it holds up better.  

AmeriColor decorator colors are nut-free and much easier to use than Wilton's colors.  

Store bought fondant is often processed with nuts.  We skipped the fondant, as I mentioned before, and used Hershey's chocolate licorice for the feet and ears of the caterpillar.  

The Cupcakes

The icing on the cupcakes is not solid green; we noticed subtle variations in color in the Coco Cake inspiration cake, which really adds to that classic Eric Carle storybook feel.

To achieve this look, we did not thoroughly mix the green icing in with the butter cream frosting.  We left streaks and permitted some portions to be light and others to be dark.  We even had one batch of darker green icing and another of lighter green.  When filling up the piping bag, I would use one scoop of dark green and one scoop of light green, alternating this way until the bag was full.

This gave us the streaks and color variety we were looking for.  My mom taught me how to do a basic cupcake swirl which took far less time than I anticipated.

I've never been able to get the hang of swirling cupcakes before, but this time, I finally got it.  My mom told me to hold the cupcakes instead of trying to frost them while leaving them on the table.  For whatever reason, this really made a huge difference in how nicely the cupcakes looked.

The Mini Cake for the Caterpillar Head:  The Faux Fondant Method

We used a small 5 inch cake pan for the head.  My sister covered the cake in red icing and then let it harden for a little bit.  Then she went back and used a paper towel to smoothe it out, creating a faux fondant look.  Here's a tutorial on it.  Their instructions are a bit more involved than what we do, but I'm sure it has nice results.  

The Details

We then added Hershey's Chocolate Licorice for the ears and feet instead of making fondant or modeling chocolate pieces.  

My sister also sorted through sprinkles, searching for nice long brown sprinkles to add to the caterpillar's back.  We added about 4-5 sprinkles to each of the outside cupcakes to give him that fuzzy look.

My mom made a batch of yellow icing of a thicker consistency for the eyes.  She pinched off a bit, rolled it up into a ball, and then flattened it out with a knife to create his eyes.  Then she did the same with the green icing and added a small nose to our caterpillar.  

The birthday boy was pretty pleased with his special cake.  He ate most of the entire cupcake!  It was his first time to have cake and icing.

Do you usually make your kids' birthday cakes?  If so, do you bother with fondant or skip it?

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