Cake Bugs

My new Nordic Ware Backyard Bugs cake pan

My Andrew gave me the new Nordic Ware Backyard Bugs cake pan for my birthday and we've been having fun with it ever since. He even included two Ghirardelli cake mixes and Baker's Joy spray. He sent it to Amy's house where she unwrapped it, baked bugs with it with her own cake recipes, and wrapped it up again.

A ganache coated butterfly

This past week at school saw scheduling changes and half days, so I asked the high school students to bake bugs for the pre-K and K boys for their bug unit. They did.

High school kids baked bugs for me from cake mixes.

I bought tubes of cake gel for decorating, thinking that small hands and developing coordination would work better with the tubes. I can't pipe icing, so I didn't expect them to! Do you know how expensive the gel is? $3 a tube! What I failed to remember was that small children at that age think that if a small amount is good, then all of it is better. We quickly had to ration gel amounts so that we could finish decorating all 24 bug cakes.

Yesterday, despite having only 30 minutes for class, the boys managed to decorate and distribute cake bugs to all of the staff and loved eating their own creations.

Some of their creations:

Jody and I have many plans for this pan this summer. I'm going to use different recipes (and the Ghiradelli mixes) and color up some buttercream. Maybe I'll even learn how to pipe icing! I'll try different colors of sprinkles, too. Happy days are coming!

Nordic Ware Rainbow Bugs cake recipe

Backyard Bugs Pound Cake recipe from Entertablement

Cornbread Muffin bugs from Mary DiSomma

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