The Lego Cake Experiment

Recently I tried my hand at making one of those Pinterest Lego cakes for my nephews birthday. I think it went well! There are some things I would have done differently after all the trial of it, but for my first time assembling a Lego cake of any sort it looked really good. It was actually pretty easy and can be done fairly cheap. I ended up making two cakes, one a 9" by 9" double layered cake(which was the more expensive) and a Lego head (probably the more fun of the two to make). For this post I'm going to focus on the Lego head since there really isn't too much to say on the layered cake; there really is no right or wrong way to do the cake. Onwards to the Lego head!

  This guy took took a little over 3 batches of rice crispy marshmallow treats, one package of Wilton's yellow fondant and butter cream frosting. 

To get the shape each batch of the rice crispy mix was pressed into an 8" circular cake pan. Make sure to butter the pan before pressing in the mix so you can easily take it out once it has set (we put each layer into the refrigerator so it would set faster). Pressing in the rice crispy mix may be a bit of a work out but when following directions for the mix off of your marshmallow bag or box of cereal you can fit the entire batch into one cake pan. While you're pressing it in make sure that you are creating a flat top so stacking the layers will be easier. The top layer was made with a much smaller batch of the rice crispy mix(I guessed on the amounts) pressed into a cookie cutter.

A thin layer of butter cream frosting should be used in between each layer of rice crispy treat(3 layers in all not including the small top). The frosting will keep each layer securely in place. Your next step is to cover the entire head in more butter cream frosting. Make sure to use a lot of frosting so you can smooth out the edges. I used just enough for the fondant to stick to and it ended up showing off the uneven surface of the rice crispies. 

Next up is your fondant. Wilton's yellow fondant is the perfect color for a Lego head and is easy to use. Roll out the fondant on a surface covered lightly with powder sugar to prevent it from sticking; do not use flour, powder sugar is in their instructions and it won't cost you the flavor of the fondant icing. If your rolled out fondant doesn't quite covered the Lego head that's okay! Using the fondant tool to smooth it out over the cake you'll be able to spread it out to cover all surfaces and will most likely be trimming fondant off around the bottom of the Lego head. If you don't have enough butter cream icing your fondant will get an uneven surface from the rice crispies instead of a nice, smooth surface. If you can't make the surface perfectly smooth that's okay too - children are going to treat it like the most magically thing to ever happen in the history of the planet. Some adults will too.

When your fondant is done and has had some time to set(shouldn't need too long) it's time to give your Lego head a face! We weighed our options with how to do this from getting black icing to using edible colored sheets cut out for the face pieces but we ended up sticking with food coloring markers. This was probably the best way to go since it made it look a little bit more like a Lego piece; no icing or colored sheet pieces sticking out from the surface of the Lego head. This also is the easiest option and allows you to copy any Lego head you want. We stuck with the original style and I was able to make small adjustments so it would be more even and correctly sized. 

When completed the Lego head was fairly large - about the size of my head. The other Lego cake pictured was made with 2 boxes of cake mix done in a 9" by 9" pan(one for each layer). It has butter cream frosting in between the layers as well as over the cake and was topped with a box Wilton's white fondant. I ended up using too much butter cream frosting and had to clean it up around the base of the cake after I was finished smoothing out the fondant. There is no special order to the brick layout; I made sure to put my nephew's age on the top and then randomly laid out the rest of the bricks.  You can use either butter cream frosting or melted chocolate to hold pieces in place(they will not stick to fondant without extra icing or melted chocolate).

The Lego bricks and people made for the cake were probably the most expensive part. They're made with white chocolate set in brick molds. All of the colors were available at the store so we didn't have to use food color on any melted chocolate and when the Lego people had time to sit (the chocolate bricks and people were all made the night before the cake was decorated) I was able to use the food color markers to decorate them. Yellow was the best option to make them with since it both matched the color of Lego people as well as was the easiest to draw on. They will melt in your hand though so if you have to pick them up to color on them you'll need to do so quickly. The molds for each can be found online at Amazon.