Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Lego Birthday Cake

As usual, I got my inspiration for this cake from one on this site and made my own variation of it.

I started out with making the fondant early in the week. This was my first experience with fondant, and I wanted to make sure I could make it right several days before the party. I used this recipe for Marshmallow Fondant from Allrecipes.com, since most people seem to think it tastes better, plus it's very inexpensive to make.

The only changes I made were to use 3 T. of water instead of 4 and I used Crisco instead of butter.

I left it in the fridge a few days then got out the Wilton paste food colors to work some magic.

Many people recommend using gloves for this process, but the only gloves we had on hand were latex and I couldn't imagine how nasty those would make the fondant taste, so I skipped the gloves. I did have to wash my hands between each color, of course, but I didn't have any problems with getting the color out of my hands, even the red.

Here's a shot of how the blue looked in the middle of my tinting process...isn't it pretty?
Corban was very proud to get to take some pictures for me. :)
Also a few days before the party, I baked two cakes; one chocolate and one yellow. Both from mixes...just easier. Once cooled, I wrapped them well in foil and stuck them in the freezer. Frozen cakes are SO much easier to cut and frost!!!
Day of the party:
I started out with making Buttercream Frosting...this time I used the Wilton High Humidity recipe, since it was a rainy day. I doubled that amount, which turned out just right.
Next I got out the yellow cake and cut it in half. I stuck one half back in the freezer and cut the other half into sections for the Legos. All of the sections I wasn't working on went back to the freezer as well. I gave the Lego sections a light coat of buttercream, then went to work with the fondant. I found that I had to microwave each color (just before using it) for about 10 seconds to get it really workable. I rolled it out with a light coat of Crisco....powdered sugar helped some, but I got frustrated with the white specks that I couldn't seem to get out of the fondant.
Anyways, I covered the cake sections very carefully (not really getting the corner technique down nicely until my last one, the red one). For the little studs, I cut large marshmallows in half, put a little frosting on them, then covered them with fondant too. The kids loved those!
After all the Legos were done, I got the chocolate cake out of the freezer and frosted it. I set the remaining yellow cake half on top and frosted it too. Then I just had to arrange the Legos on top. I had purchased some really cool Lego candies in Williamsburg at a candy store that I intended to use on the cake as well, but since I had a lot of fondant left over and hate to waste stuff, I just ended up rolling little balls of it for the bottom of the cake. I gave the Lego candy to the party guests in their goody bags. Worked out perfectly!


It was definitely a fun cake to make and everyone really enjoyed it. I DO like the marshmallow fondant and although I wouldn't necessarily want a whole cake covered with it (taste-wise), it really was pretty good.

3 comments:

  1. wow -- nice work! You made it seem so easy :)

    I too am learning that frozen cakes are much easier to work with. Thanks for the tips.

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  2. Thanks! It wasn't exactly "easy", but it wasn't too hard. Decorating my kids' birthday cakes is really the only artistic venue that I'm ANY good at, so I like the feeling of achievement when I make one. :)

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  3. OMG!! I love this cake!! My son is a lego fanatic! For his last birthday I made Lego cupcakes, but I took this "short cut" and used chocolate molded into Legos! I've never tried fondant, I'm too intimidated! Great cake!

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