Minecraft Cake: Minecraft Creeper Birthday Cake

Making a Minecraft cake wasn’t something I thought I’d ever do, but you do anything for your kids, right? This Minecraft cake was a labor of love (see all the squares) and I’m very pleased with this birthday cake.

I’ll break it down for you.

Minecraft Cake

 The video game Minecraft invaded our house earlier this year and so it became the theme for this year’s birthday cake design for my son’s 8th birthday. Before this cake design conversation started happening, I had no idea what this game was about. In fact, my son had never even played the actual game. We’d only watched some of the videos that are online (that’s a topic for another blog post!)

How to Make a Minecraft Cake

This Minecraft cake is time consuming. See these squares? Yep, I had to cut out about 405 of them. About. That’s not an exact number or anything.

I used a grid … the only way to do it in my opinion. There are Minecraft cakes out there, wonderful, beautiful Minecraft cakes, that used one centimeter by one centimeter squares. Are you crazy? No way, Jose! I upped the size to one by one INCH! Yep, that’s the ticket. So, I found a printable one inch by one inch grid and taped it to the counter. Then, I covered it with wax paper and taped that down.

Then just roll the fondant on top (within the grid) and use your ruler as a straight edge to cut out the squares with a pizza cutter or knife. I used three different shades of green fondant, one gray color, one white color, and just a tiny bit of black to make the Minecraft creeper face.

I made four 9X9 cakes that I stacked and covered in green butter cream icing. This was quite the ordeal. I should have used 5 or 6 layers considering how much you need to cut off to level the sides. It took as long as cutting all those squares! Once the cake was stacked, I put it in the freezer overnight. The next day I took it out and trimmed the cake to make it as square as I could get it. Then I put on more frosting and tried to smooth it down. I’m not very good at crumb coats.Here’s the completed crumb coat and all 405 of those squares. I didn’t end up using all 405 of them after all and had a ton leftover, but I always make more than I need because you just never know what will happen or when you’ll wake up in the middle of the night screaming because you don’t want to have to cut a new round of little 1X1 squares. More is more.

Now you get to put on the first row! Yay! Just line it up as best you can and go! I just wet the back of the little square guys and gently pushed them into the butter cream.

Keep going across, then do the next row, and the next, until you hit the bottom. Turn the cake and start another side.

Oh yeah, now we’re talking. It’s starting to look like a Minecraft cake. 
You  keep going, and going, and going. Like that famous bunny.

Here’s a size comparison for you. One inch by one inch is about the size of a quarter. That’s a lot of squares. Did I mention I cut 405 of them?

And here’s a close up of this cute guy’s face. So, OK, maybe not so cute, but it’s a Minecraft Creeper alright.

So, my squares aren’t perfect and my Minecraft cake isn’t totally square, but you know what? People were amazed and my son was delighted to show off his Minecraft cake to his friends. Totally worth it!

In order to prepare for this Minecraft cake I pinned a lot of inspiration to Pinterest and watched some great videos that capture all you need to know to make a cake like this.

• My Minecraft birthday party ideas Pinterest board with all the ideas I liked.
• The inspiration Minecraft Creeper cake that puts my cake to shame. Really, this one is so beautiful. You gotta see it.

Watch this video from Jenn at Cookies Cupcakes and Cardio — this cake is masterful. It used more than 1,600 squares! She’s my hero.