A Minion Cake (from Despicable Me) for my big 6 year old!

Assemble the Minions!

I made this cake for my son's 6th birthday party, which was on the weekend.  It was a big challenge but he and his friends loved it.

I used this recipe for the cakes (yes, it was about 5 cakes) which a friend gave me.  I made two batches of the mix and had enough for a dozen cupcakes too

Cupcakes - from The Magnolia's Bakery version, makes 48 regular cupcakes;

250g butter unsalted
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

ICING
4 cups icing sugar
125g butter unsalted
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

FOR CAKES: using an electric mixer, cream butter in a large bowl until smooth, add sugar gradually and beat until mixture is light. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sifts flours and combine. Add flours in four parts, alternating with milk and vanilla; beat well after each addition. Put mixture into 48 regular paper cupcake cases set in a muffin trays. Bake at 180 degrees C for about 20 minutes, or until golden.

FOR ICING: sift icing sugar. Place butter, milk, vanilla and half the sugar in a large mixing bowl. Beat until smooth. Add remaining sugar until icing is a good consistency. To make different colours, place icing into separate bowls and gradually add food colouring.

Note: have all ingredients at room temperature.

Tips

• Use top quality fondant - I would recommend Satin Ice over Pettinice as it tears less.  I used Pettinice for the yellow parts of the cake and it was a struggle to wrap it around the body without it stretching and tearing.
• To get a smooth finish with the fondant, take the time to ganache the cake, hot knife it to get it super smooth and then let it set before covering with fondant.
• I used half of the Wilton Ball tin to get the head shape.  The rest of the cake was made with 6 inch Wilton cake tins
• I iced the top of the cake separately to the body.  The goggle strap covered the join.  I am not sure I would do it this way again as rolling the icing around the body was quite tricky. Fortunately, I was able to cover mistakes by putting a high back on the overalls and by adding a buckle to the back of the goggles :)
• Make the goggle and the eye in advance so they have time to dry properly
• I put thin cake boards under the head top and between every two layers. I punched holes in the body cake cards so I could put wooden dowels through both the cakes and the boards.
• I used four cake dowels through all the layers except the rounded head part.

Lighting the candles

The cake along with a few cupcakes

The first slices being taken out