Making a Minecraft birthday cake

And so it came to pass that Gamer Son turned 11. All he wanted for his birthday was a Minecraft birthday cake. Also possibly Mariokart 8 on the Wii U.

Alas I could not provide a Wii U, but a Minecraft birthday cake – that I could do.

And this is it:

I followed this Minecraft cake recipe on All Recipes, which comes with a very helpful video. It makes for a fairly dense chocolate sponge which tastes GREAT.

If you are planning on making a Minecraft birthday cake like this one, my advice is to take your time and pay attention to the details. This took me 2-3 hours, although some of that was waiting for the cakes to cool. Often I rush that bit and the icing goes runny.

I bought pre-rolled icing so ensure that the top was entirely uniform and smooth but if you’re confident of your rolling skills I don’t think that’s essential. I also bought ready made Betty Crocker chocolate fudge icing. I know full well how to make butter icing but I really wanted this to be perfect so I was trying to cut down the bits I could mess up.

As it turned out it wasn’t entirely perfect as some of the chocolate icing escaped at the seams so the top wasn’t quite as smooth as I wanted it.

But all the small gamer boys who had some liked it.

So my advice to you if you’re thinking of making a Minecraft birthday cake like this one is:

Before, not after you start is the time to check if you have two identical square cake tins
If they’re not quite identical you can get away with it with some judicious trimming
Don’t skip the cake cooling down step
Make a template for the side bits of icing so they’re all identical. This isn’t a time for freehand
Watch this video on repeat