Instructions on making a Very Hungry Catepillar cake (serves lots)
Get a bundt tin (I used one which was 23 cm diameter). Amazon do them at a very reasonable price. This particular cake was made for a party with 8 two year olds and 15 adults and there was still some left over, so you may not need such a large amount.
Cook two cakes in the bundt tin, one after another ? I used a Victoria sponge with 6 eggs for each cake.
If you would like to have a marbled caterpillar inside, then add cocoa to some of your plain Victoria sponge mix and dollop in alternative dollops with the plain mix, and swirl a little bit.
Cut first cake in half, across the diameter, so you have two semi-circles.
Cut second cake in roughly thirds. Place one of the semi circles from the first cake, and then place one third of the second cake against one of the cut ends of the semi circle, and the other third against the other cut end, so you have a kind of Hungry Catepillar shape. If you are less bothered about the cake looking exactly like a Hungry Catepillar, then you could just cook one cake, cut it into semi circles and then put the two halves against each other to make a kind of S shape. I think we actually cut out bits of newspaper the right size and mucked about cutting it accurately until it looked like a Hungry Catepillar, before cutting into (and possible ruining) the actual cake.
Put cake on the board you are going to serve it on. Stick cake to board with melted chocolate (we were transporting it 20 mins in a car so it was essential it didn?t slip off the board ? you may not need to do this).
Make a ginormous amount of buttercream. You will need at least 500g of icing sugar and at least 2 pats of butter. Follow a standard recipe (eg the one on the icing packet) for proportions. Colour most of it green, using paste colouring (not standard food colouring unless you want a pale, insipid green). Colour some of it red, again using paste colouring (impossible to get proper red with red food colouring ? you just get pink).
Slather it on with a palette knife. Buttercream is very handy for covering the joins between the different bits of cake.
If you are feeling creative, make a dark green and a light green batch, so you can artfully slather it on and it looks more like the Eric Carle illustration.
Get some ready-rolled coloured icing in black, green, yellow and orange.
Shape the catepillar?s feet from the black icing. Make a marble-effect sun with the yellow and orange. Make eyes from the yellow and green. Have the Eric Carle book handy at this point to ensure your cake caterpillar is indistinguishable from the original!
Get two matchmakers (orange or mint, the choice is yours) and insert in head (the catepillar?s, not yours) to make antennae. Eat the rest of the packet.
Make up some glace icing, and use as a glue to stick smarties along the bottom of the cake board, to resemble the inside title page of the book. You may need about five tubes of smarties.
Get some nice multi-coloured candles.
Bring out to a fanfare, ooohs and aaaahs and general adoration.
Eat, to more adoration.
Popsycal - do shout if there is anything else you need - as you can see from the original thread I linked too, I got lots of good tips from mumsnetters before I made it so am happy to help others!