A Block of a Cake

This cake was a particularly fun bake! In all honesty, there was only one stressful moment, but that was right at the end and thankfully solved itself (more on that later).

The Project: A Block of a Cake
The Theme: Minecraft
Ingredients:
For the Cake
24oz Margarine
24oz Sugar
24oz Self Raising Flour
12 Eggs
Cocoa
Green Food Colouring
For the Icing
Chocolate Butter Icing
Green Butter Icing
Green Royal Icing
For the Toppers
Teal Fimo
Black Fimo
Pink Fimo
Red Fimo
White Fimo
Brown Fimo
Blue Fimo
Grey Fimo
Light Blue Fimo
Skin Colour Fimo (I'm not completely sure of it's proper name)
Edible Glue

I started this cake quite a few days in advance by creating the figures. Although I could have made them out of icing, I liked the idea of making them out of fimo, the recipient then gets the option of keeping them forever if they want to.
I kicked things off by making the Creeper, it seemed the easiest to start with as he is made up of a series of squares and rectangles, although I cannot help thinking that his mouth looks like a moustache...

After Creeper, the rest flowed pretty happily. I have some trouble with Steve and his stupid pickaxe though. When fimo is in the oven, it goes soft before it hardens and sets into place - Nightmare for the pickaxe handle - it wanted to curve to one side. I found a solution though :)

Now that I had my toppers ready to go, the rest of the cake was fairly straight forward. I baked three layers of the cake, the two bottom tiers were chocolate and the top tier was coloured green (thank you Gavin for the creative idea). The theory being that when cutting into the cake, it still looks like the grass block.

The sides then needed to be covered in a darker chocolate butter icing to fill in the holes and to give the desired effect of the side of the cake. It was a little tricky getting it smooth though

With the sides all good to go, the green royal icing could be placed on the top of the cake. The sides were cut in wiggly lines to give the impression of grass growing around the edges of the block. This green icing is what will form the shape of the piped grass going on top of it.

Piping was the hardest part, I finally purchased some piping stuff, only all that our local shop had was a slightly cheaper version of a piping cylinder that looked like something that my Mum used to use. As hers served her well over the years, I thought that I would pick it up and give it a try (seeing as they also had no piping bags in the shop either!). It lasted for one side of the cake and broke. I had to use a small sandwich bag with a screw on nozzle to finish the rest of the cake. Lesson learned. 

 Finally I placed the figures and secured them with edible glue and piped some more green around them. This is where I started to get worried about Steve, although he stayed in place, I was worried that he would topple over and mark the cake. Luckily, he stayed in place - what a good little Steve!

I got to see pictures of the 10 year old Birthday Boy upon receiving this cake, he looked really pleased with it - makes all the effort worth while :)

Total Time Spent: 6 Hours
Useful Tips Gained: Smoothers work like a charm on butter icing
Items to Purchase: New piping bag or cylinder. 
Items Added to Amazon Wishlist: Piping set and also some alphabet cutters
Miscellaneous Items Wished For: More piping nozzles for different effects