A Cake Only a Mother Could Love

Jon's mom recently asked me to make a flip-flop cake for her birthday (see pic). I got really into it and decided that I wanted to try another fun cake for the next occasion. That occasion happened to be Brian's b-day. Since he and Jon are both lego-fanatics, I decided to make a cake that looked like a bunch of lego blocks stuck together. To pull this off I was going to need fondant. In my past attempts with store-bought fondant, the cake came out looking great, but the fondant was disgusting. I found a recipe for marshmallow fondant online from Peggy's Baking Corner. Her website has a lot of information about cake decorating. It's also the site that I get my buttercream recipe from.

Here are the basic steps that I followed in the creation of the cake.

Just the Cake

I used a basic white cake recipe that I found on online. I actually thought it was too dry, so I'm not going to repeat the recipe here. Peggy's Baking Corner had a butter cake recipe that was so much better. I made two 9"x9" square cakes. Brian wanted strawberry in between the layers, so I put a layer of buttercream with some strawberry preserves. After stacking the layers I put a really thin layer of buttercream and let sit in the fridge for 20 min. This serves as the crumbcoat and prevents the crumbs of the cake from getting into the frosting. I then applied about 1/4" layer of buttercream on all sides and cooled in the fridge for about 30 min. This layer is necessary for the fondant to adhere to the cake.

Fondant Creations

The beauty of the fondant is that you can store it in the fridge for weeks as long as you wrap it with saran wrap AND store it in a ziploc bag with the air pushed out. I've read several websites that put a thin coat of crisco on the fondant in addition to the saran wrap to help maintain its moisture. I made mine about 5 days ahead and it was just fine. The marshmallow fondant was basically melted marshmallows with a lot of powdered sugar. It did taste much better than the store bought kind, but it was very sweet. If I were to do this again I would make my buttercream layer a little thinner. As it was, the fondant+buttercream combination was too sweet for me.

After coloring the fondant the classic red, yellow, green, and blue lego colors, I went to work creating the lego "bricks". Unfortunately, I didn't have a ruler, so my lego bricks were not very consistent. In addition, I should have made the fondant a little stiffer. They were pretty flimsy when I tried to apply them to the cake. To the right is the beginnings of my creation. After a while I realized that there was no way to get it perfect and just kind of gave up. Hence...only a cake a mother could love.


Once the cake had all the "bricks" in place, it was time to make it really look like a bunch of legos. The key to this was to add all the "bumps" that connect each lego together. Again, I was ill-prepared and didn't have anything to make uniform bumps. I ended up taking bits of the fondant, rolling them into little balls, and then pushing them with my finger to make little mini cylinders. I estimated that I must have made about 250 of these "bumps". However, in the end I took a poll and everyone could figure out what it was...success! If I were to make again, I would definitely try to get more of a professional quality rather than a homemade quality.