Minion Cake for 1st Birthday

This Minion Cake request came for a 1^st year birthday party. And I still remember my customer being so particular about the colors of the cake being exactly the same as the real Minion character. She personally told me after I showed her a photo of the completed cake ( a day before the delivery), how satisfied she was with the cake and how worried she was initially that the Minion’s blue and yellow will not be in the exact shade of that of the Minions.

She has had not-so-pleasant experience with other bakers in terms of getting the cake designs to be exactly as she wanted it and I could totally understand her concerns. Who wouldn't when you pay so much for a cake but end up getting a substandard one, right?

A Minion shaped birthday cake with silver alphabets on a blue cake board

So back to the Minion cake. I made this cake a couple of years back, I think about 5 to 6 years ago. And this was my first Minion cake. So I was pretty excited to decorate one when the order came in.

The order also came with a request for a set of 12 Minion cupcakes. I have covered these cupcakes in another post (coming soon). This post is for the the Minion cake.

How to Make a Minion Cake

These were the main supplies I used to decorate the cake:

Cake – this was a tall single tier cake. I used 3 layers of 6 inches round cakes and one bowl-shaped cake. All in all, the height was about 8 inches. I used my butter pound cake recipe for all the cakes.
Buttercream – I used buttercream to fill the cake layers as well as to crumb coat the cake.
Fondant – The fondant I used was homemade, based on my recipe here. I made all white and then tinted it separately into blue, yellow and black.
Round cutter set – I used these to cut out the goggles. After cutting, I adjusted the circles into oval shapes.
Round plunger cutters set – I used these for the Minion’s eyes
Fondant stitching tool – this was to make the stitch marks on the jumper.
Sugarcraft knife – this was a general cutting tool I used throughout the project. I used this knife specifically to cut out the logo on Dave’s jumper.
Alphabet cutters – I used these for the birthday boy’s name as well as the birthday message. They were purchased from a local cake decorating supplies shop.
Fondant glue.
Edible silver paint.
Minion Dave template – I searched for an image of Dave on the internet and printed it to the same size as the actual cake. I used this template as a guide for positioning the eyes, jumper and arms. I also printed out the Minion logo on the jumper and used the print out as a template for making the logo in fondant.

And this was how I decorated Minion Dave in this Minion cake:

Baking the cakes

I started my baking my cakes. I baked a total of 4 layers of cakes – 3 in six inches round cake tins and one in a bowl-shaped tin ( this was not a cake tin, I happened to have a stainless steel bowl in the size that was fitting for this cake, so I used it to bake the cake).
Once the cakes have completely cooled down, I leveled them all and then stacked them with buttercream in between. The bowl-shaped cake went right on top of all the cakes.
I then crumb coated the cake with buttercream.

Covering the cake with fondant

Since the cake was quite tall, and I was not used to covering tall cakes, I decided to not take the risk and covered the cake with 2 pieces of fondant instead. The first piece covered the sides, and the second piece covered the top. And I made sure these pieces were joined at the same level where the goggles are to be added. That way, the goggles will cover the seams and it would look perfect.
For the side joints, I smoothed them as much as I could to make it as light as possible. And I turned this towards the side of Dave so that it was partly covered by his jumper and arm.

Dave's eyes and goggles

Next, I did the eyes and goggles. Again, using my template as a guide, I cut out the lenses. Each side of the lenses consisted of 2 layers of fondant and the bottom layer is thinner than the top. I painted both in silver. While waiting for the paint to set, using the same lenses template, I made 2 white ovals and on these ovals, I attached Dave’s yellow top and bottom eyelids (the eyelids were separately cut and attached on the white ovals.)
And then I added the eyeballs which were cut using my round plunger cutters – the larger cutter for the 2 brown circles and a slightly smaller one for the black circles. After that, I attached the bottom layer lenses on the ovals and together, attached everything onto the face. And then, I added the top layers of the lenses on both sides.
Next, I added the black goggles strip all around the head (this was in black). And finally, to hide the joints between the black strip and the lens, I added 2 tiny sausage-shaped fondant pieces on each side. I painted these in silver.

The Minion's jumper

Once the eyes were done, I went on with the jumper. I measured the height of the jumper in my template and cut out a blue strip of the same width and attached it all around Dave. And then, using the smallest cutter in my round set, I cut off two semi-circles on both sides of the jumper (where the arms are to be attached). Using the stitch tool, I imprinted the stitch mark at the edges of the jumpsuit.
After that, I made the logo and put it on the front. This was followed by the legs and arms. All were shaped in fondant and attached to the cake with glue. Once the arms were in place, I cut out 2 “c” shaped pieces, put on the stitch marks on them and attached them above each arm. And I added black buttons too.

The mouth

Next was Dave’s mouth. I started with a black semi-circle piece that was cut using my round cutter set and then cut out 2 strips of scalloped white strips which I attached to the black semi-circle piece as the teeth. And finally, I added the hair. These were hand shaped and attached to the head with fondant glue.

Minion cake decorating guide

With that, the Minion was done.

Wordings on the cake

For the wordings on the cake. I made them using my alphabet cutters and let them set before painting them in silver and attaching to the cake board. I used 2 levels of cake board for this cake simply so that the entire birthday message could be seen from the front of the cake. It was for this purpose also that I have added black cubes of fondant on the cake board where I have placed the birthday boy’s name.
And finally, since there was also no space to poke the birthday candle (except on Minion which I personally did not prefer), I provided another black cube right in front of Dave and poked a matching blue candle in it.

With that, the Minion cake was all complete.