Minecraft Birthday Cake: Creeper Vs. Ghast
Monday, September 16, 2013 I'm not the mom who does crafts or sews halloween costumes or cuts up vegetables into fun little shapes. But the one pinteresty thing that I do is to decorate birthday cakes for my children's birthdays. Each year they pick a theme, and I figure out how to make it happen.
Having a child who turned nine this month, it seemed rather probable that this year's request would be for a Minecraft cake. And it was. I'm usually the type to decorate with regular icing (see flower) or candies (see Pink Panther) or toys (see Lego) or maybe a combination of the above (see Scooby Doo). But Minecraft had me stumped. I couldn't find square candies in the right colours and I couldn't find locally available (i.e. no time for Internet orders) Minecraft toys. I could have done paper cake toppers, but I didn't think that would impress.
So I went to the Internet and asked people who know more about Minecraft and cakes than I do and everyone said: fondant. I'd never used fondant before, so I didn't know (a) how easy it would be to use (although time consuming) and (b) how expensive it would be. One thing I hoped would work (and it did) was to mix white or black with other colours to get different shades (e.g. light green, medium green, dark green). I used Wilton's fondant, including their Primary Colors pack, their Natural Colors pack, and a big package of white fondant.
I started by rolling out the fondant, mixing colours as needed (e.g. the grey was created by kneading white and black together), and using a pizza cutter to cut it into squares.
Meanwhile, I baked and cooled two pans of brownies and cut them into the desired shapes for the cubes, the creeper and the ghast. The cubes were several layers of brownies, while the creeper and ghast were just one layer, cut to the right shapes.
(yes, you can tell I'm not a real food blogger. I have crumbs and mess all over the place)
Then, using chocolate icing for the cubes and buttercream icing for the Creeper and Ghast, I placed the pieces, trimming more as required to get the design I was going for.
Since it was my first time using fondant and I'm not a professional cake decorator by any means, I was fairly pleased with the result. I placed the pieces of the cake on a piece of wood (actually a shelf from my closet!) and wrapped it with packing paper. This was the only partial fail in the process, since there was a nice ring of grease around each of the cakes the next day (brownies are a greasy delight, what can I say?).
The best thing of all, of course, was the birthday boy who was absolutely thrilled with the cake. He fed me ideas (Creeper vs. Ghast was his idea), hovered over me as I made it (until I sent him to bed) and thanked me over and over again for the Minecraft cake.
His friends were impressed too. As you can see, I had trouble getting a picture without other excited hands entering the picture.
Reader Comments (14)
Impressive! Not sure I'll show my own 9 year old Minecraft fan or he'll have high expectations for next year...
WOW! You might seriously be a gifted baker/Minecraft mother. I know nothing about Minecraft, but my son is 9 and I have a feeling I will know quite a bit soon. Also had never heard of foundant before.
Nice job. I do that with the kids' birthday cakes too. I started using marshmallow fondant for cakes last year, and the kids love the result. The dragon cakes were difficult, but the kids were still pretty happy with it all.
I don't think I'll show my kids (who are playing Minecraft right now), although maybe I should. Way simpler than the dragons were.
Oh, that looks FANTASTIC. You did a great job!
Impressive! I can see why he loved it.
That is VERY VERY cool. I am (as a non-baker but mom of kids who always want this type of stuff) impressed. :)
This is fantastic! I'm totally impressed... and nervous because I think I'm next up for the Minecraft cake project. I'll be following your example. Where did you buy your fondant?
Hilary:
I went to Bulk Barn first and they only had large tubs of coloured fondant at around $18 each and the colours weren't quite right. Then I went to Michael's and they had the Wilton's products that I mentioned in the post (primary colours, natural colours, and white fondant). You can also just get white fondant and colour it yourself, but that was too much work for me and I was worried about not getting the colours right.
It's totally amazing. I never seen this in my life ever before. It's really unique birthday cake craft.
Nowaday, everyone wants cake at their home because of less time, so we can use cake sending service to send cake to any special person.
My daughters are minecraft crazy - we've got a birthday coming up and Minecraft cakes aren't something you can pick up in the supermarket. Been looking for something like this for a while. Thanks for the share.
Annie - how far ahead of time did you make and assemble the cake? Can you cut out the fondant squares a few days ahead of time and keep them from drying out? I'm doing this for my 9 year old's b-day this Saturday!
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