Growtopia Cake

Do you remember the Injustice-themed cake I did for Samuel last month, the darker, more grown up kind of cake? Well, now it’s Samuel’s little brother Isaac’s turn to have a birthday. And like his big brother, Isaac is into gaming. His fave game is Growtopia. I’ve never heard of this, but apparently it’s sort of like the Sims, where you "grow" a world for your characters while interacting with other gamers.

Growtopia-themed Cake

The Growtopia game scene is cheery and bright, with lots of happy colours. I wanted to reflect this on the cake, with the bottom tier decorated to look like a typical scene from Growtopia, and the top tier as the "sky".

Isaac’s mummy requested for the Dragon of Legend & the Legendary Katana to be featured on the cake as well. With only blurry screen shot images off of Google and Wikipedia to work with, I’m really quite pleased with the Dragon of Legend that I managed to sculpt out of gumpaste!

Dragon of Legend, in progress

I chose gumpaste over fondant to make this figurine because I needed something that would dry rock hard, and wouldn’t droop too much (as fondant does) during the sculpting process. Actually, I had to do the dragon twice because my first attempt had it looking like a fat purple dinosaur (no, not Barney! more like a brontosaurus...)

Dragon of Legend

The dragon’s teeth are painted on with a toothpick and some super white Americolor food colouring. There are wires running through both of his wings to help support them on his body. The Dragon of Legend turned out to be pretty fierce-looking, eh?

one fierce dragon

The cake itself is 2-tiers of cookies and cream cake, consisting of Devil’s Food Cake, filled with chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream and roughly chopped chocolate Oreos.

Cookies & Cream cake

Isaac’s mummy wanted the cake to be finished in buttercream, with fondant accents. She was excited to discover that such a design could be done which balances the fondant with buttercream after seeing a pic of this Garbage Truck cake. I did my best to give the cakes a smooth sky blue buttercream finish. However; I accidentally ruined the surface when I was stacking the cakes when the top tier slipped sideways and landed in a bad way on the bottom tier. Grrrr! I really need to be more careful. And of course, I inevitably put some unwanted scrapes and dents in the buttercream after the cake was fully decorated, simply because I’m so clumsy! Sigh.

purple hills, just like in the game!

Anyway, the iconic part of Growtopia’s game scene is the three shades of purple mountains in the background, which I recreated on the cake. I had to work quickly to apply the fondant on the cake, because condensation starts to form on the surface of the buttercream as soon as the cake is removed from the fridge. Fondant deco will start slipping and sliding down the side of the cake if condensation forms on the cake before the fondant can be stuck on, which is what happened to Dusty’s eyes on this Planes cake.

Growtopia-style clouds and bricks

I added additional fondant details, like the big round yellow sun, some brown stepping stones with green grass on top, some bricks (indented each line with a knife to get the pattern) and the unique Growtopia clouds, each individually free-hand cut. The clouds remind me of stretched-out number 4's. Ha.  

hand-cut letters in "Growtopia"-style font

I wanted to have Isaac’s name, front and centre of the cake in Growtopia-style font. I marbled together 3 shades of fondant dyed buttercup yellow and threw in a bit of white fondant as well to get a nice colour gradation going on the letters. I used an edible ink black food maker to add shadowing to the letters, just like in the Growtopia title logo. And since we have the Dragon of Legened and the Legendary Katana on the cake, Isasc’s mummy thought it would be fun to put “Legendary “ before Isaac’s name as well. I did the letters for this using Tappits cutters and added shadowing as well. To make the letters stand out, I textured some brown fondant for the background, with a brick & wood grain pattern using a roller. 

standing letters & "7th"!

To add a “grass” layer to the cake, I covered the cake board with green fondant, textured with a line-pattern rolling pin.  Isaac’s mummy requested for the “Blessed 7^th Birthday” message to be standing up on the board, so that it would look more impressive than lying flat. I didn't know how I was going to get the "th" to stay on the "7th" but I lucked out when the flat bottom edge landed on the "B" and it held up! Ha. I used a bit of royal icing under each letter to secure them to the board.

the Legendary Katana

As with Samuel’s cake, Isaac’s birthday celebration was held in their school’s outdoor canteen. Fondant cakes are always on the losing end of a fight with heat and humidity. The Dragon of Legend figurine got all sticky even before I managed to get it on top of the cake. I had intedended for the dragon to be “flying”, with a skewer for support, but with all the stickiness, I didn’t manage to thread the skewer properly through and the dragon ended up directly on top of the buttercream.

who's ready for cake?

Isaac’s first comment when he saw the cake was “how come there are no people?” Hehe. So cute. He’s referring to the Growtopians of course. I would have added a few had Isaac’s mummy requested for them. And then he said "why are the black dots missing on the dragon's eyes?" Oh, are there suppose to be black dots? Shoot! Darn blurry images from Google!

the happy birthday boy*

Anyway, Isaac and his friends completely devoured the cake! Really can’t go wrong with chocolate when it comes to kids! I’m so glad everyone enjoyed the cake. Glad to have played a part in Isaac’s birthday celelbration. Happy 7^th Birthday, Isaac!

Blessed 7th Birthday, Legendary Isaac!*

*thanks to Isaac's mummy for these pics