Giant Bookbug Cake Decorating and Baking Tutorial

Here Paul explains the design and draws out a template that he will be using to cut around on plywood using a jigsaw cutter. It’s always best to do this away from any food and you may want to take this job to your local DIY store.

Paul now starts the long and scary task of stacking the cake and being sure to add cake card and dowels in between each layer.

Here Paul finishes adding the final layers of the body and decides making the head from polystyrene will be wise. The sheer weight of the cake is the deciding factor here.

Paul now carves the cake using a long serrated knife with plenty of paper around the bottom to catch the cut offs. Nothing to waste at PBSS studio.

In this lesson Paul adds the top section and secures it down with hot glue and tin foil to keep it food safe. Now it’s time to get the hands dirty and smooth the mountain of chocolate off.

Paul makes big simple legs from two 6” square cakes! We weren’t joking when we said it was a big feeder.

Paul decides to make the feet using rice krispie treats as there’s definitely enough cake being used already. Plus…kids love rice krispie treats.

In this lesson Paul makes the arms that hang down either side of the body and then covers them in ganache and left to set before being covered in sugarpaste.

Time to roll out a very large pieces of white sugarpaste and cover the arms and just below the neck area. Don’t worry about it looking to neat and without creases as it will all be covered up with fur in the end.

Now it’s time to roll out the red sugarpaste and cover the areas still left to be covered. Paul is going to turn the sugarpaste into dungarees which will be very cute.

Paul is using polystyrene cake dummy for thead as the weight of the cake would simply be too much using cake. Paul shows us how to carve a simple shape that will allow us to create the face.

The key thing here is to make sure you put the correct feet on…as you’ll see Paul doesn’t manage to do. Although if you find yourself in a similar predicament fear not, as Paul shows us how to correct this at the piping stage.

Have you ever made a book made from cake? Well now you will and Paul shows us how to make a very quick but realistic full edible book. You could spend as much time on this as you like ands it could even be made into a fantastic standalone cake.

Time to get the tv or radio on as this is going to take a while. Paul pipes every single bit of fur onto the cake using a star nozzle. Make sure and use a very large piping bag so as not having to refill every minute.

Paul has been a busy bug during and has worked through the night piping as well as making the wings and antennae. In this lesson Paul demonstrates how to make it all and then attaches them to bring the bug up to the airbrush stage. How exciting!

Always make sure to have good ventilation when doing airbrushing as well as a face mask of some sort. It can get pretty messy so you may want to lay down some old sheets around the cake to protect your surfaces.

Paul now uses simple pieces of sugarpaste to finish the face in keeping with the original illustration. Of course, you could take creative license here and do whatever you want.

In this lesson Paul makes the books with two of them being from cake dummy and one being real cake.

Here, Paul rolls out lots and lots of green sugarpaste to cover the board and then textures it using a PME quilting tool.

Paul stacks the books onto the board using ganache in between each one to secure them. If you are making all of the books from cake remember to put card and dowels in between each layer. Paul gets his faithful FMM tappits out and some flour paste to make the letters which he then attaches to the cake.

Now for the final touches and it’s back to the airbrush to add a little texture to the board and books and then a little blusher for the face and we’re done!

In this lesson, Paul shares some other ideas to inspire you when making this cake to make it unique to you. We’re sure by now that you’ll have some of your own ideas and we would love to see them.

Please share your snaps with us on our Facebook page!

Here Paul goes into detail covering things like portions, ingredients costs and pricing and lots more. It’s vital information for any professional cake designer!

Don’t forget you can also work out your portion and serving sizes by using our cake calculators.