Cubular! A Minecraft Birthday

       My brother discovered this game called Minecraft about three years ago. It was love at first cube. This being his lucky 13th birthday, a Minecraft party was devised. A normal Safeway cake was considered but I wanted to try something different. I've seen those how-to pins about Minecraft cube cakes on Pinterest: perfectly square with all those obnoxious little squares on top - a perfect replication of a Minecraft grass cube. I decided to give it a try, and I decided to try fondant for the first time instead of just using buttercream.

Yummy and gorgeous!

       Quite a few people talk about either how difficult fondant is, or how bad it tastes. Since Wilton's sounded not so great, I chose Satin Ice - not the tastiest, but not the most difficult to use. It served the purpose. I split one tub into three spheres; each sphere was dyed with different amounts of green coloring gel. Another tub was chocolate flavored, to avoid three different shades of brown for the dirt portion of the cake. Each different green was dissected into squares, with a total of 64 squares for an 8inX8in cake. 

Check out that chocolate fondant... Mm mm mm...

       The cake was two layers of chocolate with chocolate buttercream filling. I used a gluten-free mix for the cake and whipped buttercream for the filling and the fondant. After putting the two levels of cake together, I dirty-iced the entire thing. That means I scraped buttercream over every inch of it. Then, I rolled out and cut the chocolate fondant for each side and the top of the cake, instead of one full sheet to go over the entire cake. This way the cake was more cubular than rounded. Afterward, I applied another coat of buttercream on the top and began adding squares, which had been in the fridge during the baking process.

The candles were angled like the torches in Minecraft!

        Once all of the super-annoying squares were applied, I covered the cake with a large cardboard Creeper head - which, I am told, is bad for said head - and kept it in the fridge until 1.5 hours before the party (meaning overnight). Be warned, condensation is fondant's worst enemy. When taken out of the fridge, the fondant will begin to "sweat", which can lead to peeling. Thankfully, that didn't happen here.

       At the end of the day, it was a lot of fun working on this cake and serving this cake. Though it took several hours over three days, it was totally worth it. The kids loved it and were amazed when they found out that it wasn't store-bought. Most importantly, my brother and I had worked on it together - and he loved it. At the end of the day, family is the best birthday present.

       Stay tuned for more from the College Kitchenettes as the winter holidays draw near and warm, home-baked desserts are a favorite family activity. Check out our Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, and our new subscription feed for our monthly newsletters starting in 2014!