Ben 10 Cake for 6th Birthday - A Decorating Tutorial

I made this Ben 10 cake for my son’s 6th birthday. Ben 10 and his Omnitrix watch were the ‘in-thing’ for him, so when I asked him what cake would he like for his birthday, he obviously chose Ben 10 and specifically requested for the Omnitrix watch to be on the cake too!

A rectangle cake with Ben 10 image on it

Ben 10 birthday cake in butter icing for a 6 year old boy

This was a fairly easy decorating idea. And that is simply because there are no special decorating skills required, neither are any special tools nor cutters required except for some basic decorating tools and piping tips.

How to Decorate a Ben 10 Cake:

These were the main supplies I used for this Ben 10 cake project:

Cake - I used my butter pound cake recipe and baked the cake in a 13 inches by 11 inches rectangle cake tin.
Buttercream - I used buttercream to fill the cake as well as to pipe the stars border around the top and bottom of the cake
Butter icing - The whole cake was covered in butter icing. I did not tint the icing. The ivory hue of the icing was from the butter that went into the icing.
Fondant - I used my homemade fondant for this cake. It was only for Ben 10 image, Ben 10 logo, and the birthday message on the cake.
Alphabet cutters
Sugarcraft knife
Disposable piping bags
Star piping tip
Cake decorating brush
Food coloring - I used Wilton food coloring. These were mainly to paint Ben 10 and his logo.
Ben 10 image and logo template - I traced the image out of my son's coloring book. He wanted Ben 10 in the exact same image as it appeared in the coloring book so I made one exactly like that for him.

And this was how I decorated the cake:

The template

First and foremost, I got the Ben 10 template ready. Since the image was on my son's coloring book and was of the right size to fit on the cake (which made it all the easier for me as I didn't have to resize the image), I just traced it onto a parchment paper. And then I cut it following the outlines ( I had 2 templates; one was Ben 10 and the other was the logo).

I rolled out some white fondant to about ⅛ of an inch. I then placed Ben's image template on the fondant and traced all the outlines. Using a sugarcraft knife, I marked all the lines on the image. Using the knife makes this process easy. The knife cuts through the paper and the lines were clearly visible on the fondant.

Once I had all the lines marked on the cake, I removed all the paper bits. I say paper bits because, by this time, the paper image was in pieces already!!.

And I followed the same process for logo.

I left the fondant to set overnight so that it does not loose shape when I start painting it and also when I transfer it onto the cake.

While waiting for the design to set, I set on baking the cake.

The cake

I baked a large sheet cake – 13 inches by 11 inches rectangle cake. Once the cake has cooled down, I covered in butter icing. I did not tint the butter icing and left it at its original ivory color. I also had some buttercream tinted in black and brown for the borders.

Next, I painted Ben 10 and the logo cutouts using food coloring to match the original Ben 10 colors. For this image, I used Wilton colors in ivory, green, white, black and yellow. I did the same for the logo.

Once the painting was done, I lifted the fondant cutouts and placed them on the cake (I did this with a large palette knife). Since the cake was covered on butter icing and the designs were placed flat on the cake, I did not use any buttercream to stick the fondant onto the cake. It stayed well in its place because of the butter icing underneath.

Using black buttercream and Wilton #2 round piping tip, I piped black outline all around Ben and the logo. I then used the brown-tinted buttercream for the top and bottom star border of the cake.