The adventure of trying to make a house a home that we built for our family of six plus some craft, home décor, recipes & any family fun we might have.

Saturday 31 March 2012

LEGO BIRTHDAY CAKE

So it was Caelan's seventh birthday last Saturday and he wanted a Lego cake for his birthday. I agreed to make him a Lego cake because I didn't think it would be that difficult. Last year my sister made a Lego inspired birthday cake for my brother's 24th birthday. At the time she used fondant icing which she tried to colour red and I remember her telling me how hard it was to get the fondant a true red colour. She also priced getting a Lego cake made, she was looking at a minimum of $300 which we both thought was overpriced especially as the concept is so simple.

So after talking it over with R a few times she gave me some helpful advice regarding the cake and how to go about constructing this cake. I was going to make a few butter cakes, cut them into the correct Lego shape and then ice them. R's advice was to buy a half sponge slab from our local Woolworths supermarket because that way you won't have any problems with the cooked cake. So I placed an order for the slab of sponge and then I went about collecting all the supplies that I'd need. It was while I was looking for a round cookie cutter that I found a small unfilled sponge that would be ideal for the tops of each brick. So I searched Pinterest to get some images to help me gather my thoughts on what I'd need to do.

Now because my birthday boy wasn't feeling well on Saturday I opted to do his cake on Sunday, this created a birthday weekend and the fun lasted longer. So we went out, met up with Aunty C, Oomie and his 2 cousins. After spending a few hours hanging out it was back home and then Mummy was off to start the cake decorating. How hard could it be? All I had to do was colour the icing, put it all together, sing Happy Birthday and then eat it - an hour tops. Well 4 hours later we finally sat down to sing Happy Birthday and then it was off to bed for my 3 very tired children. Quinlan had gone to bed 2 hours earlier so he missed out on the special celebrations.

So here is what I did, I won't go into too many details but I'm sure you can see what I did from the pictures I took.

METHOD
1. Decide on the size bricks that you want, Caelan wanted a 4x2, and a 2x2 brick. I had 12 tops so this was ideal for the sponge size I had. Cut out all the shapes you need to construct your Lego brick. I then decided to make on 2x3 brick, a 2x2 brick and a 1x2 brick using three different colours (blue, green and yellow) As you'll see from the pictures that due to the time it took me I dropped the 2x2 yellow brick.
The smaller sponge I found was ideal for the Lego tops and the
cookie cutter was the ideal size for the overall appearance
of the Lego bricks.

2. Mix up your icing (I used butter icing) and ice the entire cake. I iced the bottom section of the cake first, then I placed the tops in the correct position and then I iced around the edge of the circles and then I finished off doing the tops of the circular sections.
You can see that I left the top of the green Lego brick until last.
The finished Lego brick is a little rough but Caelan didn't care.

I had a few issues getting the colour right, I added so much of the blue and green food colouring. Looking back I think I'd start earlier and I spend a bit more time working on the correct colours. The Lego was from their pastel series.
 
 
3. Make sure you have placed your Lego cake pieces a good distance apart and then gather your child's favourite Lego figurines and put them on your cake or on the cake board. I placed mine on the board.
Caelan loved the Police Lego so I grabbed 2
figurines a robber and a policeman.

4. Decide on the number of candles. Although Caelan was 7 I used 1 candle because I didn't want to crowd the cake and secondly because there was only one candle that looked OK.

All in all the cake was a winner, the kids loved it and the good thing is that Mr Opoes and the kids have all been able to eat left over cake all week for morning tea. The other positive is the left overs haven't taken over my freezer I still have room for everything else. I will make this again especially if Quinlan is as Lego obsessed as Caelan is.
 
 
Megan

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