3D Minion Cake

I took my kids to watch the new Minions movie in the cinema. My 14 month-old sat through the whole thing, mesmerised by the cute little yellow guys! And afterwards, she kept saying "minions! minions!" Haaa. Anyway, Minions had already been a really popular birthday theme, ever since the release of Despicable Me, but now, we are seeing even more Minions birthday parties, thanks to the new movie! Oddly enough though, I haven't had an opportunity to make a minion cake until now!

3D minion buttercream cake

Making a 3D minion cake isn't structurally difficult. It's 5 layers of 6" round devil's food cake, with a 6" half-sphere on top. I happen to have a 6" Wilton ball pan, so i didn't have to worry about carving the round shape for the head. If you don't, no worries. Just bake up another couple of 6" cakes and just round the edges off with a serrated knife to shape the minion's head. 

mmm chocolatey goodness

In between each Devil's Food cake layer was whipped dark chocolate ganache, which I made sure to dam with a border of swiss meringue buttercream so that the filling didn't ooze out. I didn't bother to dowel and cake board every 3 layers cuz it was just a small cake, but if you are going with a large-diameter minion, it would be a good idea to have some structural support for your cake. 

6 layers, all ready to be frosted

After stacking on all the layers, I dirty iced the cake with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, dyed yellow and denim blue with some food gel. I got the "denim" blue colour by mixing a little purple in with the blue dye. 

dirty-iced minion

To decorate the minion, I used a small star piping tip and just piped the all around using buttercream. I did the eyes and mouth first, then the goggles and the overalls, before piping yellow buttercream to fill in the rest. 

look at all those stars

The minions arms and hands were just built up using buttercream. I carved his legs & feet out of some cake scraps before piping more buttercream on top.

missing my feet!

Then, I outlined the minion's mouth and added teeth with some black buttercream and a no. 2 piping nozzle. After outlining the overalls with some brown buttercream, the last thing to do is add a small "G" in the middle of the pocket. 

baldy's got a funny grin!

Now at this point, the minion is looking pretty good already, and you can go ahead and stop here. But I didn't want to leave him bald! So I rolled some tiny snakes of fondant and stuck it on top for his hair. 

bird's eye view

I added some fondant lettering, attaching it onto the cake board with some royal icing to help it stand. Ta-Da, our minion is complete! Happy 6th Birthday, Kai Jie!

back of the minion

Happy 6th Birthday, Kai Jie!