Cakecraft - Happy 7th Birthday Hamish

My favourite Minecraft buddy Hamish had a party to celebrate his 7th Birthday today. To mark the occasion I created this Minecraft inspired cake, with the assistance of husband and my friend Liz.

Birthday boy with cake

If you aren't familiar with Minecraft you should be, because it's awesome. You can read about it on the interwebs, but basically the game world consists of cubes.

The Minecraft world

There are lots of examples online (especially Pinterest) and many different ways to approach making a Minecraft cake. Here's what I did:
  • Earth/grass blocks: Three batches of chocolate brownies (see go to recipe) with green buttercream frosting (see go to recipe).
  • Sand blocks: Kellogs LCM Bars 
  • Water: Berry Blue Aeroplane Jelly
  • Lava: Mango, Orange and Strawberry Jelly (once the jelly is well set use a fork to rough each color and gently mix together).
I made the brownies the day before so they had overnight in the fridge to harden, this made cutting them into cubes easier. I made the jellies several day in advance so they were well set prior to being needed. Because of the materials needed for this cake, it really can't be assembled ahead of time, so block out a couple of hours prior to your party!



Step 1 - cutting the materials (brownies and LCM bars) we used buttercream frosting as an adhesive (chocolate for brownies and vanilla for LCM bars) and a small strip of grey fondant to go under the lava section. The LCM bars worked well and easily cut to block size (we even used a thinner half layer to help enclose the water jelly). In hindsight the brownies were not the best choice as they are so dense, it is more difficult to cut them all to the exact same block size (I would also recommend larger block sizes in the future). I think if I were to make this cake again I would bake normal chocolate cakes, cut them level using a cake leveler, and use a square cutter to make squares that all conform to the exact same size.


Step 2 - piping the grass. This was tricky due to the very small holes on my grass tip - I would recommend a larger style grass tip in the future.


Step 3 - adding the jelly. The lava is easily spooned in, the water is a little more tricky as it is cut into blocks. The best time to transport your cake to the venue is prior to this step. It is fairly easy to add the jelly at the last minutes before serving.


Step 4 - add characters. I used some of Hamish's Minecraft toys, but more ambitious cooks could make fondant characters.

The finished product!


One magical unicon fairy cake please - Happy 3rd Birthday Abby!

Two tiered rainbow cake


For Abby's 3rd birthday she requested a Mia and Me inspired cake, with extra unicorn!


I used a simple vanilla sponge for the base. To get a rainbow effect I divided the cake batter into a five separate bowls and coloured each of them a different colour. I then slowly poured each colour into the centre of the cake pan. I made two round cakes, one slightly smaller than the other. 

 

Once the cakes had cooled, I made a big batch of pink buttercream frosting and iced both cakes. For the base layer I rolled the cake sides in a tray of rainbow sprinkes and also coated the top of the cake.




After placing the two tiers together I piped a little icing to hide the join and added some small fondant flowers and leaves (and the candles of course). This cake was made so much less complicated because I purchased the unicorn from ebay (make sure you order well in advance).

 

The finished cake turned out OK and the rainbow insides were a nice surprise!