Bug-Themed Birthday Cake Tutorial

Published: Last Updated: By:Elizabeth Marek

Skill level: Intermediate

Today I’m going to show you how I made this bug-themed birthday cake for my daughter Avalon’s 3rd birthday party. She loves all things bug-themed right now: caterpillars, butterflies, snails, slugs, but I drew the line at spiders. 🙂

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to make not 1, not 2, but 3 mushroom cakes that are fully sculpted from actual cake. You’ll learn how to make the beautiful, gravity-defying butterfly with gelatin wings, modeling chocolate snails, a hand-painted caterpillar, and some pretty details that finish the whole cake off.

My bug-loving girl loved this birthday cake and I think you will too!

1:59:11 Minutes of Instruction

What You Will Learn

  • How to create a butterfly topper with wings painted with edible watercolor
  • Liz’s way of tiling the tiers for the mushroom cakes
  • How to sculpt snails and a caterpillar
  • Learn how to make 3 different sizes of mushroom cakes

Tutorial Chapters

  1. Painting the butterfly wings 0:55
  2. Assembling wings 6:26
  3. Large mushroom structure 9:24
  4. Medium mushroom structure 14:45
  5. Small mushroom structure 18:12
  6. Prepping cake structure 20:53
  7. Bulking up stalks 23:48
  8. Stacking the cakes 26:33
  9. Building the butterfly structure 38:26
  10. Bulking up the body 43:51
  11. Detailing the butterfly 45:45
  12. Sculpting the snail body 1:01:42
  13. Sculpting the shell 1:11:34
  14. Final details 1:16:06
  15. Sculpting the caterpillar body 1:26:46
  16. Painting the caterpillar 1:31:37
  17. Final details 1:39:52
  18. Paneling the mushroom stalks 1:41:54
  19. Painting the mushrooms 1:45:00
  20. Finishing the mushroom caps 1:48:22