Japanese Beetle Bug Cake (Tutorial)

My daughter's friend had a bug themed party and when asked to make a cake, I jump for joy suggesting a giant bug for a cake and that is exactly what I made....a big, creepy, Japanese Beetle Bug Cake.

The beetle is sitting on a 16-inch round board and its body measures to about 12 x 6 inches.  He's entirely made out of cake and decorated in fondant.  Here are some of the step-by-step photos of the process in making the cake:

Baked 2, 8-inch square cakes plus a cupcake for the bugs head.  Cut out the base of the cake out of a cake board and used it as a template to carve the basic outline of the beetle

Basic outline of the bug carved out of cake

I used a paper template from a coloring page of a Japanese Beetle to get the features just right on the cake.  Further carved the sides of the cake into shape.

Remove the template and eyeballed the rest of the features and carved out the roundness of the bugs body

Cover in ganache and let it sit overnight to set

After it sits out overnight, I pop the cake into the fridge for about half an hour to get firm so that I can handle it better.  I propped it up over a container so that as I add the fondant details, I can wrap it up under the cake to give it a more 3D look rather than have it sitting flat up on the cake board.  I lightly drew out the details on the cake with a scoring tool so that I can get a better feel of what I need to make.  The cake does form a small layer on condensation as it comes back to room temperature and it works to your advantage and helps the fondant stick to the ganache without needing to add anything extra.

Keep adding the details on the bug cake section by section.  As you can see, the cake is propped up over a rectangular container that fit under the bug's body.

The wings were the most difficult to get just right.  I must have spent a good hour shaping them.  I then let the cake rest for a couple hours so that the fondant can harden up a bit before painting in the details.

I then painted the wings with piping gel that I watered way down with vodka: I used a mix of chocolate brown, bright yellow and white gel colors.  I also painted the body of the bug the same way using a little bit of yellow to give it some texture and dimension.  The piping gel dries up leaving behind a glossy shell.

I used the coloring page as a reference to sculpt the beetle's legs with - I wrapped up a straw with black fondant and sculpted the details on it.  I used the same technique to create the tentacles.

All 6 bug legs made and left to dry overnight.  The tips of the straws sticking out is what I use to insert into the cake.  I used sugar glue (Tylose powder mixed with water) to help hold the legs into the cake.

Once the cake was assembled, I used white royal icing to brush the "fuzzy hair" around the sides and back of the bug.

 And that's it.  Hope you like it and didn't get too creeped out by it.

Japanese Beetle Bug Cake

(a view all around)

Rice Krispie Sushi Treats

Sushi anyone?  I love sushi and I'm was so glad that we got to eat real sushi after making these - got my sushi craving satisfied...at least for the moment!

It was the night before my father-in-laws birthday and my husband and I were talking about what I should make.  For the past 3 years, I had created a tennis themed cake (Tennis Racket, Tennis Court, and last year, a Tennis Shoe) and although I had originally planned on making another tennis themed cake, I really didn't feel like it.  We were going to a sushi restaurant the following evening to celebrate his birthday and my husband thought it would be really nice to surprise him with a sushi cake or cupcakes instead.  It was late in the evening and we just had one of the hottest days of the year and baking, was not one of those things I wanted to do in the midst of the heat.  And I thought (a light bulb moment), why not make them out of rice krispie treats (RKT), they're his favorite anyways.

I quickly gathered up all the stuff and stayed up late making these.  Big pat on the back for creating such a neat treat at a short notice in the middle of the night with no planning, baking or prepping for - whoo hoo - SCORE!  And dishes...aside from the bowl and spatula used to make the rice krispie treats, my sink was empty and not an aftermath of a mess in the kitchen to clean up (well, a tiny mess on the dinning table where I worked on these) - I LOVED it!  I am one of those that really hates the clean up part of cake-ing and would rather decorate more than anything.  And when each cake averages 15 hours to make plus weeks upon hours worth of design and planning, it was such a nice change to be able to make something that didn't take much thought and planning for.

RKT and Fondant:  Candy Sushi Cut Rolls

(ooo, bad lighting with this one - used my cell phone)

The first thing I made were the cut rolls.  I made them like your would normally make a regular roll of sushi but instead of using rice, I used rice krispie treats and stuffed the inside with red vines, marshmallow ropes and some homemade mango fruit rollups (pretty much I grabbed what I had on hand that would work).  Rolled it up tightly using a sushi mat then cup them up into 1 inch circles.

Making Nori (seaweed)

To make the Nori (seaweed wrapper), I took a crumbled piece of foil and stamped it along a thinly rolled out piece of dark green fondant (the little square at the top of the photo is an actual piece of nori that I used for reference and later ate up...umm umm good).

I've made some sushi before at home and there are a couple websites that show you how. I used the same technique to make these:  It works just the same as if making them with rice.  Be sure to keep your hands greased up with a little bit of shortening to keep the RKT from sticking to them.

Here are the Ikura (Salmon Egg) Sushi.  I rolled out little balls of orange fondant and painted them with piping gel thinned out with vodka.  I layered on colors of yellow, orange, red and white to give them a shinny, almost transparent, appearance.

RKT and Fondant:  Ikura Sushi (Salmon Eggs)

One naked shrimp and one dressed up with the 1st few layers of coloring

For the shrimp, I hand sculpted them out of white fondant, scored it a bit then painted it over with a mixture of piping gel thinned out with vodka in layers of yellow, white, orange, and red.  I kept going over it in layers and layers of colored piping gel to build up the texture found on shrimp.  They were then laid over the RKT (I used a little bit of piping gel under the pieces to help them stick a little to the RKT).

RKT and Fondant:  Shrimp Sushi

I did the same thing with each of the other sushi pieces:  hand molding them, scoring them, painting them over in a variation of gel colors and piping gel thinned out with vodka.

RKT and Fondant: Salmon Sushi

RKT and Fondant: Tuna Sushi

RKT and Fondant:  Tamago Sushi

To make the Tamago Sushi (egg custard), I rolled out the fondant just like you would make the real thing then painted in some highlights with egg yellow and white gel colors.

Once I had everything made, I didn't know what to use to display it on.  It would have been really nice to make a bento box but there was no time.  As I dug around the house, I spotted a bamboo steamer basket - it worked!  It also had a nice lid to hide the sweet goodies from everyone =D

And again, I'm craving for some sushi...

A Mad Hatter Tea Party (and Mad Hatter Cake #3)

Oh dear, here is one cake that I didn't get around to share with you all from last May - A Mad Hatter Hat Cake with a modeling chocolate figurine of the birthday girl.

A chocolate cake filled with strawberry Italian Meringue Buttercream
and covered in Chocolate Ganache dusted in green, brown and gold dust

Last May we made the 6 hour drive to San Jose to spend Easter with my cousin and to also help with her daughter's 10th birthday party.  It was the most amazing Mad Hatter Tea Party.

the girls huddled in front of the cake while eating some treats =)

This was the 3rd Mad Hatter Hat Cake that I've made and if you would like to see them, check out my previous blog posts here:

Mad Hatter Cake #1

Mad Hatter Cake #2

We also made a bunch of decorations to top the cupcakes with...
- Stacked teacups which I later filled with chocolate ganache
- Mad Hatter Hats with her birthdate
- Clocks with her birth time
- Eat-Me tags
- Ribbon Roses
- Clubs, Clovers, Hearts and Spades
- and butterflies

The chocolate cupcakes were frosted with a swirl of purple and pink Italian Meringue Buttercream and topped with an assortment of decorations.


We also made cake pops and skewers of fruit and placed them in tall vases stuffed with colorful tissue paper.

My cousin did an awesome job with the table setting:  A couple unique tea pots and a different teacup for each setting - not one of them looked like another...it was perfect for the theme.  She also found some really colorful and bold plates, cups, napkins and little trinkets to make for a super colorful and perfect tea party.  I went overboard tying a bow onto anything that could hold a bow (I loved the red/black/white printed ribbon) - it's even up around the windows and wall decor too =)

She even setup a table for the little ones.

And the doily lace trimming around the cake stand is a paper border that my cousin had bought a while back.  It came precut and folded up inside a little packet by Martha Stewart.  I attached it to the side of the cake stand with some double sided tape.  I loved how it dressed up the stand - so simple too.


We had all hands were on deck from family and friends in putting this together and it turned out quite lovely.  An incredibly beautiful birthday for an incredibly beautiful girl.

Mom's Knitting Basket Cake

A birthday cake for my mom who can knit, crochet, or embroider practically anything....

The basket was made out of 2, 9 inch round Carrot Cakes filled with Cream Cheese Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMBC) that I tinted brown with some AmeriColor gel colors.  I didn't want the white IMBC to peak through the basket weave but in the end, with a white "liner" hanging over the basket, it would have technically been OK if it was kept white - if you get what I mean - live and learn =)  For the basket weave pattern, I cut out strips of MMF in 2 sizes (one size for the vertical pieces and a another, wider size, for the horizontal pieces).  I had never done a basket weave before but once I got the pattern down, it all came together pretty easily.


(Recipe for the Cream Cheese IMBC can be found at the bottom of this post:
Korean Hanbok Dol Cake from March 2011)

Once done, I brushed the fondant over with some Chocolate Brown Petal Dust and added the white fondant trim around the top rim.  I used a stitching wheel to add the stitch pattern around the top and bottom edge of the white trim.

The balls of yarn were made out of Lemon Cake that were filled and covered with IMBC.  I finally got around to using a cupcake pan my husband bought for me two years ago like the one pictured on Amazon below (Wilton Multi Cavity Cupcake Pan).  They were the perfect size to create the balls of yarn with for the basket.

I put together 2 of the cupcake tops to form a round ball.

Trimmed off the pointed tops of the cupcakes to help make the ball look more rounded.

Used the bottom halves of the cupcakes to make a larger, oval, yarn of ball.

I then frosted all the balls of yarn with IMBC and popped them into the fridge for about an hour to firm up while I prepped the fondant.


There's a really neat post on Vegan Yum Yum on how to make balls of yarn and clothing with marzipan.  I used the same technique but with MMF that I mixed with Tylose and a Clay Extruder to help extrude the miles upon miles (as it seemed) of fondant-yarn.


After trying out a couple of the disks that the extruder came with, the 2 disks pictured below worked out the best in creating the yarn look especially once the fondant was twisted.

I used the smaller disk (pictured left) for the green and purple balls of yarn and the larger disk (pictured right) for the pink ball of yarn.

Extruding the fondant, twisting it to look more like yarn, piecing it together into sections.  Trim to size and add to the ball of yarn.  Repeat and repeat and repeat until the entire ball of yarn is covered.

Spirals of fondant yarn to attached to the ends of the balls.

The finished ball of yarn.  I later dusted it with Pink Luster Dust.

To get the gradation of color on the purple and green balls of yarn, I stuffed the extruder with a small amount of colored fondant followed by a small bit of white, then back to color, then white until the extruder was filled up.  As you extrude the fondant, it comes out with a really nice gradation of color.  The idea come to me after I had made the pink one and realized that it would have looked much better with some variation in color added to it.  It actually worked perfectly since my mom had always preferred using the yarn that had a variation of color versus the solid ones =)

The purple knitted piece attached to the needle was something I improvised on and made up in trying to figure out how to show the gradation in color with.  Hopefully these pictures below make some sense.

Marble purple fondant with white.  Cut it out into strips, fold the strip in half, twist, then roll between your hands until you get a nice, thin, piece that looks kinda like yarn.

Brush a little bit of water between each strip to help hold it together then fold over every other piece like in the photo.  Make sure the pieces sticking up are long enough to curl over the needle.

Roll the long pieces of fondant over the skewer using piping gel to help it stick to the skewer.  Flip it over and use a toothpick or a scoring tool to create the knitted pattern into the fondant.  For the knitting needle, I used a wooden skewer and painted it in Gold Dust.

The completed piece.

For the top of the knitting needles, I rolled out a piece of fondant into a cylinder shape and poked it into the end of the skewer using piping gel to help it stick together.  I also painted it over with Gold Dust then imprinted 6's on the top of each needle: shhhh, my mom turned 66 - a little discreet and very personal.  I don't think the party guests caught that.


The 6's were made by pressing a #10 round piping tip into the fondant and a scoring tool to shape out the tail of the 6.

I added a little cross-stitch heart to the front with Royal Icing.  A little tip to help the royal icing from not breaking on you as you pipe lettering or something thin is to mix a little bit of piping gel into it.  It helps the Royal Icing stretch and not break on you.

Happy knitting...eating!