Crazy Cake seasons have become far less crazy, now that the kids are out of the house. Last year, my daughter didn’t ask for anything specific, but this year she slyly said, “I’ll be happy with any cake … but a peripatus would be cool.”

Behold, the velvet worm cake!

Naturally, I made a red velvet cake for the body. The legs are walnut shortbread cookies, usually shaped into crescents, but in this case shaped into peripatus legs. The antennae are cinnamon sticks. I covered the whole thing with light blue cream cheese frosting, and then piped dots of coloured white chocolate on top. The moss is coloured coconut.

It’s not the most biologically accurate peripatus–I couldn’t fit all 30 legs on (I couldn’t even fit in all the legs into the inner loops of its body)–but the extra legs I made gave me something to snack on as I decorated the cake.