The Very Hungry Caterpillar 1st Birthday Cake

I made two vanilla sponge cakes, filled with jam and buttercream and then covered them with a buttercream coat. Placed on a rotating cake stand.

Knead white fondant icing (all icing used was by Renshaw) until pliable and roll out on a dusting of icing sugar until wide enough to cover the cakes.

Lift the icing over the cake and smooth with your hands or a with a smoother.

Cut out small discs in red, blue, yellow and green with a cutter and place randomly around lower edges of cakes. On the upper cake I wrote the name in black gel colour on the discs.

Knead both greens, the brown and a small amount of tylose powder (this hardens the models) roughly together to make a marble effect and roll into a sausage about 20cm long and an inch thick. Bend into a u shape and place skewers into each side. With a knife or cake tools make indents along the body.

Add the head in red by rolling a ball, adding eyes and brown feelers to the top and gluing with tylose mixed with water. Once the caterpillar has hardened, insert skewers into cake so the caterpillar stands up. Add small brown feet once he is standing.

Roll out different colours of fondant icing (with a little tylose) and create fruit/veg/cheese shapes as seen in the book. Add the small holes to show where he has eaten through them all :) Add these to the cake wherever you see fit!

I've added gold and black colouring onto the food items using a paint brush to make it look like the illustrations of the book.