Minecraft Cake!

Minecraft Cake!

On my son’s 8th Birthday, I made a Minecraft theme cake.

1. Bake!  I always use the Wilton’s butter cake recipe (I cut the sugar down a cup and added a tad more vanilla extract and deleted the almond extract – I don’t like the way it tastes…)  It’s a dense cake, and I love it’s flavor.  Here’s the recipe:  http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Butter-Cake

I used two square baking pans.  Make one recipe amount and divide into the two pans.

2. Make Icing!  I made Wilton’s chocolate Buttercream icing.  here’s the recipe:  http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Chocolate-Buttercream-Icing

Put icing in the middle of the two square cakes and also cover the whole cake.  Before covering the cake with icing, cut the sides so the two cakes make a nice square piece, with no rough edges.

Add chocolate icing and cut off the sides

3. Decorate!  This is the fun part!  I used the Wilton’s white rolled fondant.

I first colored a good grapefruit size amount with a kelly green icing color, because that is the color I would need the most.  I would use this to cover the cake, and also to make the “creeper.”

Roll out the green fondant.  I use the Wilton’s mat as a guideline.  For this cake, I rolled out almost as big as the mat, just to make sure it’s large enough to cover the whole cake.

*using a rolling pin (very important not to use your hands/fingers) lift the fondant and drape it over the cake.

Use a fondant smoother, or your palms to smooth out the surface of the cake.  To avoid sticking, use powder sugar on your palms when smoothing out.  Cut out the excess around the cake.  The corners are a little tricky, but the trick to covering a square cake is that the fondant need to be in a shape of a flattened (square) box, with 4 square flaps on all four sides of the center square.

4. Make the cake toppers.

First make the Creeper.  allocate the green fondant so that there are enough for the head, body, and 4 legs (I think they are legs)  Then, knead and refine each piece so each pieces become a smooth square/rectangle.

Color some fondant with black icing color, and knead until the color is even.  Roll out and cut small squares and rectangle for the eyes and mouth.  Dab a little water on the back of the pieces and attach them onto the face.

Using toothpicks, attach the legs and the head to the torso.

   

Make Steve and Enderman.  Color fondant so you have peach, blue, brown, black and a teeny bit of pink for these guys.  Sculpt them using a guideline, like a picture or a toy.  Put them together using a toothpick.

Make different hues of brown.  My kids called these kaka.  I made kaka shapes just to play around with them…  Roll them out and cut it into small squares.  I used the square grid on my mat as a guideline.  Dab a small amount of water to the back of these squares, and attach them to the sides of the cake.  (By this time, I am thinking “what have I got myself into?!” ) (This is a very tedious process…)

Place  Creeper, Steve, and Enderman on top of the cake.  I used bamboo skewers to support their backs, so it looks like they are sitting.

Ta Da!  My first plan was to just do a Creeper, but it looked too lonely, so I proceeded to make Steve and Enderman.  I’m happy I did, and my son is thrilled!