As an 80’s baby, Colin the caterpillar was an integral part of every birthday party growing up!

I cherish precious memories, nostalgia and family traditions and the caterpillar cake has created and been a part of many of those over the years.

Many people who grew up with the caterpillar cake are now vegans, they have children of their own, some vegans, some with allergies, either way there was no caterpillar cake option for us.

So around this time last year I developed the recipe for the chocolate swiss roll, an eggless swiss roll is a technical challenge, one I was determined to rise to. After a few attempts the challenge was complete.

Once I had developed the recipe I started working on creating the character for the cake. The face you see today was the first attempt, his beaming little face could not wait to come to life.

At the time I developed the recipe I was still building my life after hitting my emotional rock bottom. Jay of Viva la Vegan has been a constant emotional and professional rock since we first met a few years ago and she was helping considerably in developing Vecreation, so it seemed only fitting that Jay became a permanent part of the project she helped build. I asked Idan, Jay’s young son if he would name the character for me, he called the character Charlie after his best friend at the time. It’s beautiful to me that there is a childlike energy attached to Charlie emerged from a supportive loving friendship.

It wasn’t until recently that I set a new challenge of creating a vanilla swiss roll. This challenge was actually harder!
As soon as I had achieved it I knew what I wanted to do! As I kept making my way through jars of Biscoff I had to combine the two! I did just that and creates Biscoff Charlie! I entered him in a recipe competition on Vegan Food UK and won. The recipe was posted and got over 5k comments.

This was just the beginning, Biscoff Charlie was then posted on Boo Hoo and numerous other fashion sites, he then featured in articles by Entertainment Daily, Delish and Tyla! He went mainstream viral!

I don’t know what the future holds for Charlie, I would love someone to step forward and collaborate with me to make him widely available. As the recipes are available on my website, Charlie has already been a part of some special birthday’s! I have received some beautiful messages telling me why Charlie is so meaningful to people.

If any of my creations represent what Vecreation is about, it’s Charlie. He represents family moments, happy memories and traditions. Created with the support of incredible friendships and love, he is a vegan product that has captivated and salivated a non-vegan audience and he is the result of not giving up on a dream, no matter how long or how many set backs you receive… don’t give up. 

By Beth – Vecreation