Thursday, November 26, 2015

An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !

A minion cake is simply a big yellow circle with an eye, so I figured, eh, how hard can that be!!

The Practical Mom: An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !

Part One: The Cake

I didn’t even think of using my go-to recipe of Nigella Lawson’s Guinness Chocolate cake, every morsel of which was *so* dense, *so* moist, *so* deliciously filling that I never wanted to try any other cake ever again! (on second thought, I DON’T THINK we can really feed beer cake to children. Or can we?!)

While I could easily get a bottle of Guinness in Indonesia (it is one country other than the UK to have a bottling plant!) I found it pretty late in Chile. BTW, Cherry Chile (Manuel Montt Road in Providencia) is *the* shop to buy anything and everything related to baking cakes (not Guinness though!)

Anyways, I searched for a recipe for most basic chocolate cake (i.e. with easy to buy ingredients) and I found one on Nelli Belly’s blog. Here is their link for this delicious cake, and here is my version with some teeny tiny tweaks (in the wordings mostly!). It is easy and requires only one mixing bowl. 90% of the beating was done by the birthday boy who was pretty kicked about being stronger than mama (he is, btw!).


Ingredients

1. 3/4 cup (200 gms) soft butter
2. 2 cup sugar (icing sugar)
3. 3 eggs at room temperature
4. 2 tsp vanilla
5. 3/4 cup cocoa
6. 2 cup all-purpose flour
7. 1 tsp baking soda
8. 3/4 tsp baking powder
9. 1/2 tsp salt
10. 1 1/2 cup milk

Instructions

  1. Grease bottom of pan (I used a 23” round pan) & preheat oven to 180 degrees. 
  2. In a large mixing bowl, add all ingredients in the order above, beating well after each addition.
  3. Spread batter evenly into the pan & bake for 45 minutes. 
The Practical Mom: An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !

The Practical Mom: An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !

The Practical Mom: An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !


The Practical Mom: An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !


Part Two: The Decoration

I had envisaged covering the entire cake with a nice soft yellow fondant, but that ship sailed as soon as I tried my hand at it. The first fondant I used had to be kneaded, which I apparently royally suck at and had to use a butter knife to scrape off that sticky gooey stuff off my hands! And the other pre-kneaded one feel in love with my rolling pin and refused to let go. 

But the good news is that fondant is like play doh: as much as it is difficult to roll flat like those professional videos that give you high hopes on youtube, it is really easy to mould into toppings. The key is to stick all things together before the fondant dries off, and to keep shoving every minion once ready into the refrigerator!

Ingredients for Icing (Frosting) & Topping:

Yellow, Blue & Black Fondant, Chocolate chips for the hair, Eyes
Basic Butter Cream Icing Recipe  (Butter, Icing Sugar, Vanilla, Milk)+ Yellow Food Coloring
Toothpicks 

The Practical Mom: An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !

The Practical Mom: An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !


Although rolling the entire fondant into an entire cover is nearly impossible for moi, you still need to roll it though. A trick I learnt while surfing for salt dough ornaments for the christmas tree was to lay down a parchment paper (baking paper), place a ball of fondant and place another piece of parchment over the ball before rolling it flat. Helps with the sticking issue!

I used a knife to cut out the jumper suit and straps for the googles. I had some silver stuff which refused to stick on the fondant so I kept the googles black instead. They look like burglars, that’s what they are, are they!

The Practical Mom: An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !

The Practical Mom: An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !

The Practical Mom: An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !

The Practical Mom: An Amateur’s guide to making a Minions Cake, from Scratch !



Until later! Stay in touch!



6 comments:

  1. Adorable and cake looks amazing! Great job mom and son!

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  2. What a beautiful minion cake, and I'm sure the cute little boy helping love it also. Thank you for sharing with the Clever Chicks Blog Hop! I hope you’ll join us again next week!

    Cheers,
    Kathy Shea Mormino
    The Chicken Chick
    http://www.The-Chicken-Chick.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very cute! I am not at all brave enough to try fondant but I always admire its beauty!

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  4. What a darling Minion cake! Looks like you have a wonderful little helper. Thanks for sharing with SYC.
    hugs,
    Jann

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank you all for your encouraging comments ! :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. I have recently started a blog, the info you provide on this site has helped me greatly. Thanks for all of your time & work. cupcakes in bakersfield

    ReplyDelete