Hi folks

I am looking through an old magazine at the winners of a kids cake decorating competition. One of the consolation prizes features 'the hungry caterpillar'. His body is made up of three different shades of green, done in buttercream. So there is a light section, dark section, darker section, then repeat all three colours until the end of his body.... does that make sense?

Anyway, there is nothing in-between each section of colour. Each green just butts up to the next shade of green, and it's neat as a pin! I would have expected the shades to blend into each other and look messy without something to border them.

How is this done, does anyone know?

http://picasaweb.google.com/zespri/JustStuff?authkey=Gv1sRgCNCCheyrxJeh3gE#5495027797482397554

Cheers, Rachel

P.S. If anyone can elighten me as to how to attach a picture to my post, or even to use the 'img' button, I'd be grateful! As far as I can tell I'm doing everything right, but nothing seems to work.

I'm not sure, but do you think it could have been a FBCT?

I would love to see this! and know how it is done too! I hav been wondering if you can do buttercream in the half and half cakes that are so popular, but they have a border to hide the seam. Hope someone has a good answer for you!

Could they have used the Melvira technique?>????

There is probably a piped outline, then filled in with a piping bag and smoothed to a clean finish.

Aha! I had never thought of that, Deb G. Yet another reason CC is so awesome!

I just scanned it in, as I realised it's a bit difficult to help without seeing what I mean! I've put it in a private album so it won't come up in google searches, as I feel a little uncomfortable publishing someone else's photo!

http://picasaweb.google.com/zespri/JustStuff?authkey=Gv1sRgCNCCheyrxJeh3gE#5495027797482397554

If I'm able to, I'll go back and edit my original post too, to put the link in there as well

After seeing the picture, I'm definately staying with the piped technique idea. Best of luck.

I think you could be right. I've been going over in my mind how it would be done, and it makes sense. Thank you for the suggestion

I've done something very similar and I used the pipe-in and smooth techique.

The pic looks like a sliced bundt cake that's reassembled into the caterpillar shape. Maybe each piece is frosted individually and then when they're put together you can gently smooth the seams.

That would also work quite well, good thinking!!

P.S. I just added 'bundt' to my list of cake terms I've never heard of. There are a surprising number of 'americanisms' in cake terminology, I'm loving learning them all! (I'm assuming it has american origins, google only had one definition and it didn't say where it came from).

I have done something similar with ganache and buttercream, and to cleanly separate the two - I wrapped the part I wasn't frosting with wax paper, frosted one color, set it in the fridge to set well, then repeated by putting wax paper on the newly frosted part and added the second color. I saw it online somewhere, and it worked for me.

zespri- here in southern Illinois bundt cakes are almost overdone, any flavor you could possibly imagine. And everyone's momma has a secret recipe stashed somewhere! Don't get me wrong, some can be very tasty, my momma has acouple of good ones in her recipe stash. And I think every new bride gets a bundt cake pan at her wedding shower!!

Yes, I know this is off the subject.- Now back to those smooth seams!

My first thought was that perhaps each section was frosted separately, and then they were arranged in the caterpillar shape.

Which would be a lot of work! But it would account for the fact that the lines between the colors are quite neat, but the frosting itself is not particularly smooth.

It also occurred to me that you could apply one color of frosting, perhaps using waxed paper or something to "mask off" the areas you don't want to cover, and then freeze the cake for a few minutes. Then apply the next color. The frozen frosting would not move when you pushed a spatula or piping bag full of the next color frosting up against it.

I don't think I'd be able to get the joints that neat if I just piped, then smoothed. I'd end up accidentally "smoothing" one color across another.

Oh, about the photos. You can use the "photos" button to upload a pic from your computer and attach it to your post. Or you can use the "img" tags to include a photo that resides on another website (such as Photobucket or Picasa) -- type: [ img ] url-of-the-photo [ / img ] only without the spaces.

In either case there are some size limits, which may be why you had trouble.