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!

Aarrr! It's Cameron's Birthday

Chocolate Pirate Cake

It's Cam's 2nd Birthday and time to celebrate pirate style! This cake was relatively straight forward to make.

The cake was a simple chocolate sponge cake (can't remember the recipe I used sorry, but I just googled it!) with chocolate buttercream frosting for the outside of the cake.



Accessories are chocolate wafer biscuits for ship decking, pretzels for railings, chocolate cigarillo for the bow, and smarties and lifesavers for decorations. The sail is made from edible papers and was ordered on eBay.

The 'waves' are chocolate cupcakes with blue buttercream frosting, accessorised with store bought gold coin chocolates. The sailors are vintage lego men from Cameron's uncle.

Jurassic Birthday - Angus is 2!

Chocolate dinosaur cupcakes

I was on a  roll with fondant work so I decided to attempt these cute dino cupcakes.

The dino heads and tails are fashioned from fondant. This was done a week in advance to allow them time to dry. The eyes are completed with edible pen, the lettering was created with cutters.



I baked a batch of simple chocolate cupcakes and a few different colours of buttercream frosting that i piped on. The heads and tails were pushed into the frosting/cake and finished with some sprinkles.

 

 

Leaf my cake alone - Happy 6th Birthday Hamish!

Inspired by Andy Griffith's Treehouse books this cake required a fair bit of structural engineering! Especially as it needed to be robust enough for Hamish to take to school.

I started with the fondant work, using molds for leaves and flowers and free hand to create small fondant books (edible pen is used for the book covers), string ladder steps, house planks and windows. This part was completed about a week before the cake was due to allow everything time to dry.

The base for the cake was a simple vanilla sponge cake, also made a day or so in advance so it had time in the fridge to firm up. I cut the cakes into shape for the tree base and the house component. The tree trunk was iced with chocolate buttercream (I used a toothpick to make the finish look a little like tree bark). I also iced the tree house with chocolate buttercream, and then covered it with light brown fondant. I attached the tree house to the base using wooden skewers.



To finish off the main cake I added some fondant 'planks' and windows to the house as well as the other fondant accessories (steps, flowers etc). To accompany the main cake, I made some chocolate cupcakes in medium and small sizes. Using a green buttercream frosting and adding the fondant books to finish.



I really like the finished product and apparently the kids at Hamish's school did too!