Friday 28 March 2014

How To Make A LEGO Benny The Spaceman Cake

We're rather proud of the LEGO cake we made for our 4 year old's birthday based on the head of Benny The 1970's Spaceman from The LEGO Movie and he loved it. It was really fairly simple and here's how we did it....


You will need a hemisphere (half a ball) cake mould or any smooth metal or Pyrex style bowl you can safely bake in, or an incredibly steady hand to shape the top cake. We used a 16cm medium hemisphere mould (3 egg cake mix) we bought from Lakeland.


You will also really struggle to colour the icing unless you get gel food colouring - I bought ours from ebay and paid about £2.50 each, but they last a long time and will save you money if you use it all as you need such a small amount compared to liquid food colouring.

The cake mix we used was your basic sponge. Using classic sponge is tastier. It's a little harder to work with and doesn't last as long, but I'd rather make something that tastes delicious, rather than using a 'construction cake' recipe.  You will need to make 3 sponges. 2 round (or square and cut them like I did), and 1 hemisphere.

Ingredients (per cake)

3 eggs
Weigh the eggs, get the same quantity of Sugar, Butter and Self-Raising Flour (it'll be somewhere around 180grams)
Teaspoon Vanilla Essence

Method

Preheat the oven to 160c/320f/Gas Mark 3
Grease your pans and line the flat tins if you wish
Cream together the Butter and Sugar
Add the Eggs bit by bit, mixing in between
Add the Vanilla Essence
Add the Flour

Cook for around 25-30 minutes for a flat cake,  50-55 minutes for a hemisphere cake. Stab it with a skewer to test - if it comes out clean then it's done. If the top starts to burn cover it loosely with foil.

Putting together the design

Ingredients

The 3 Cakes
Ready to roll Icing, or make your own with icing sugar
Blue, yellow and black Food Colouring
Butter and Icing Sugar mixed together to make Buttercream
Apricot Jam

Method

Take the 3 cakes and pile them on top of each other. Cut them to shape as below. Mine are different colours as I ran out of white sugar and changed to brown!


How to make a LEGO minifigure cake birthday

Then take them apart, then rebuild with buttercream in between, and cover with buttercream.


I was a bit over-generous, you only need a thin layer of buttercream so that the icing sticks. You can use apricot jam instead if you wish.


Make your blue icing. You'll need elbow grease to get the colour even throughout. This temporarily adds air, which makes it look slightly lighter than the end result will be.

Roll it out big enough that it'll cover the cakes completely.


Choose which side you want as the front and drape the icing over the top being careful not to pull, stretch and break it. You'll have to cut off the spare icing at the back and smooth it together as best you can. Then place it onto the surface you'll be using. Smooth the surface with clean, warm hands. Don't stretch the icing, give it a bit of love.

How to ice a LEGO minifigure head cake

If you're using a board you can ice that if you wish - we made ours red.

Cut out a template from greaseproof paper for the face. The hole in the spacesuit helmet  is larger than you might think and wraps around the face. I can't give you an exact dimension because your cake won't be exactly the same size as mine!

LEGO Benny Spaceman cake instructions

We used cocktail sticks to hold it in place, and 'dot' around the template carefully, then use a knife to cut out the gap for the face. If you press the icing slightly with the edge of a knife you can make it seem thicker than it is. Don't forget to draw a line in the blue icing to be the broken chin strap!

LEGO Birthday cake

Use the same template (or one exactly the same shape and size) to cut out  the face from yellow icing. Roll your yellow icing as thin as you dare. Cut 1mm larger than the template all round - just bigger than the template.


Carefully position your face into the gap. If you press it in then it gives the illusion it's further back, and an actual face behind the mask. The buttercream has a little bit of 'give' to it.


My partner also cut out letters freehand to spell boy no.4's name.


Then you have to make the face using black icing. A bottle top (rum) seemed around the right size to cut out the eyes. Use apricot jam mixed with a little warm water to 'glue' the icing onto the iced cake.


Our mouth stretched as we positioned it. You can avoid this by starting at one end, and if it stretches, cut a little off the other end. Once applied, you can't take it back because the black icing stains the yellow icing.


And voila, you have a Benny cake....



The back of our cake isn't incredibly neat, but it wasn't going to be on display for long before it was cut, and our 4 year doesn't care. If I'd had it out for the whole party I'd have smoothed it more.



He thought it was great, and that's what matters most....



Link up your recipe of the week

50 comments:

  1. This is a fantastic cake, he looks so utterly delighted with it! Good work!

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  2. This is awesome cake! Love it. You make it easy but no way I can do it!

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    1. Awww, thanks Eileen. You could make this easily, you really could :)

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  3. That is one amazing cake, well done

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    1. Thank you Angela! It was really easy, we're complete cheats :D

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  4. Replies
    1. Thanks hon - I am very proud of it, but I really think it was the idea that was the tricky bit :)

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  5. It looks great! I'm not surprised he was thrilled with it! My son would love something like this - I will have to keep it in mind for his birthday.

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  6. I want to insert a swear word :-) This is AMAZING!! I was thinking my boys would love this. And concluded I would love this. What a fantastic job... and don't even get me started on how wonderful the icing looks on such a tall cake. WOW!
    Happy birthday Zeke! (Your mum is awesome!)

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    1. Awwww, Debbie, those are such lovely comments! Thank you so much :) x

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  7. Oh my god that's genius! I visions of making a similar one as a minion now. Wonder how many calories one slice of that has! ;)

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    1. Hahaha...if you look, even though there ar so many of us, we all got more than 3 slices each in the end, we cut it very thin :D

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  8. Truly fab, makes my pathetic fire engine to shame

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    1. Oh crikey Mary - you should have seen my previous efforts - the first one I ever made was a Percy the engine and I was really proud, that was 18 years ago, I've had a lot of practice :D

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  9. I'm extremely impressed!!! I can just about manage a basic cake!! x

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    1. Thank you hon! I'm sure you make some lovely cakes :D x

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  10. Wow, this looks great. I have to make my daughters baptism cake soon and I'm secretly a little disappointed as I don't think Lego people are going to cut it :(

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    1. Hahaha.....I don't know, a nice white one - although the only white LEGO figures I can think of are ghosts and vampires, so maybe not!

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  11. This is absolutely AWESOME!!! Love the detail - like the broken helmet.

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    1. Awww, thank you hon! We couldn't possibly leave the helmet intact hahaha :D

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  12. Wow, great finished result and great instructions. Though I do like the marbled effect in the blue icing!!

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    1. Thank you! You say the nicest things, you really do! :D I had to get a photo of that icing, it looked gorgeous :)

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  13. Oh wow that's such a cool cake. And he really looks like he loved it!

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    1. He was delighted with it, it was a total win. Thanks for the lovely comments Tas :)

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  14. That is amazing, I bet he loved it

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    1. He really did. Thank you for your lovely comment Alison :)

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  15. This is a fabulous cake, it looks really effective and I think a cake that any little boy would love. Will have to keep it in mind for future birthdays. :-D

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    1. Thanks Fiona! I think our 16 year old girl loves it too - shes got a soft spot for Benny :)

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  16. Replies
    1. Hahaha...you know it! This on'es Awesome with a bit of 'Spaceship, spaceship' :D

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  17. Replies
    1. Thanks Laura! TB H it was goingt o be something completely different at first :D

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  18. Awesome! Can I put in an order for my birthday please?!

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    1. Yeah sure, send me your husband's email address and I'll talk him through it :P

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  19. O M G That is fantastic! My boys would be overjoyed to receive that on their birthday! Wooo might have a go!

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  20. This is a great cake and it doesn't look too difficult to attempt

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    1. It really wasn't at all - let's face it, we managed it! :)

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  21. Tobys proud mummy23 May 2014 at 23:13

    This is just amazing and it has given me inspiration for my little ones next birthday coming up as he just adore lego so much

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    1. Aww excellent! Go for it, it's so much easier than we though it would be :)

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  22. Replies
    1. Awww, thanks Jenny! That's very high praise coming from you :)

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