It’s your little one’s birthday. This year, you’ve decided to make the effort to organise a party with most of the class coming, complete with pass the parcel, party bags, coordinated tableware, buffet, etc. Then you realise you need a huge cake and your little one says they really, really want a big Lego Batman Birthday Cake!
This happened to us and not wanting to disappoint, we searched high and low but couldn’t find a Lego Batman Birthday Cake in the shops that would feed the 25 party guests plus a large number of family members. We inquired into getting a professional to make our cake and soon we realised we could easily spend the whole party budget again on the cake alone. So I decided to make the cake myself. I’ve had some practice making cakes before but this was going to be the most technically challenging I’d undertaken so far.
I scoured the internet for ideas and then came up with the design shown above. It was surprisingly straightforward to construct and everyone, including my son, was most impressed. So if you’ve got a little Lego Batman fan and want to wow them with an amazing cake then this could be the design for you!
Lego Batman Birthday Cake
I can’t remember how many it serves as we seemed to be eating it for a week! I would conservatively estimate 30-40.
Step 1: Bake 2 Victoria sponge cakes.
I used two 6-inch and two 9-inch cake tins to make the two layers. I always swear by Delia Smith’s Victoria Sponge Cake Recipe for my cakes and scale it up depending on the size of cake I want to make.
To fill these four tins, I ended up using a 16 egg mixture which requires 32 oz cake margarine, 32 oz self-raising flour, 32 oz caster sugar and a little vanilla essence! The two bigger sponge cakes took longer to cook than the smaller ones so you need to keep an eye on them as they cook. It’s a good idea to test your sponges by pressing the centre to make sure it springs back and use a cake tester a number of times across the cake to carefully check whether you think it is cooked.
When you’re happy they are, turn them out carefully and leave them to cool completely. I usually make my sponges the day before I plan to decorate them. This ensures your frosting isn’t going to melt which makes the icing too soft to work with.
Step 2: Fill your cakes.
Use a cake cutter or a long knife to take the top off each cake and leave you with level surfaces. Fill between the two big sponges with jam and frosting, and between the two smaller sponges with jam and frosting. I always turn the upper sponge upside down so the cut tops are sandwiched together and the tougher outer ‘crust’ is on the outside. It’s ok to be generous with the frosting but try to avoid putting too much jam on as you don’t want it to ooze out when you stack the cakes.
Step 3: Ice the two layers.
Smooth frosting all over the top and sides of your cakes with a spatula. Again, you can be quite generous here. I use shop bought frosting and refrigerate it for 15 minutes so it is firmer to work with. If you have a rotating cake decorating board it can make this job a bit easier.
To create the Lego Batman Birthday Cake I used 3 colours of icing – black, yellow and grey. I always use shop bought fondant icing as I haven’t successfully made my own yet! The grey icing was made by adding some black icing paste to a large block of white fondant icing and kneeding it until completely blended. You must let this icing cool down again before trying to work with it.
Roll a little of each colour of icing out, cut some rectangles and stick them in a formation to look like bricks up one section of the large cake.
Roll out the grey icing ready to cover the bottom layer but put something like an egg cup infront of your bricked part. This will ensure the grey doesn’t stick to the bricks. Lay the grey icing over the cake and the egg cup. Smooth and trim the rest of the grey icing around the cake so its flat and neat. Then carefully using a sharp knife or scissors, cut the icing in front of the egg cup from the bottom-centre outwards 8-10 times to create the triangles that look like something has blasted out. Peel each triangular piece of the blast back one at a time stick it against the cake with a little edible glue. Hold each triangle until it is secure. It’s time consuming this part but worth it.
Ice the top layer of your cake with black icing.
Step 4: Carefully stack the cakes.
Use a little frosting on the cake board to stick your bottom layer to the board, and then a little frosting to stick the upper layer onto the bottom layer. This part is really tricky as you don’t want to damage your icing. A cake lifter and another pairs of hands helps here as it is heavy!
For extra stability push some dowel rods vertically through both layers. I used three dowel rods in a triangle formation. Make sure you cut them down to the right length before you push them in as you don’t want them to poke out of the top of the cake. I would normally do this part before icing the top layer but as the Batman logo is going to be stuck on top, it doesn’t matter here.
Step 5: Decorate your Lego Batman Birthday Cake.
As you can see I made a Batman logo for the top of the cake. This was cut out free hand from a picture I found. If you are not confident with this, print out a picture the correct size and cut it out to use as a template.
I made lego bricks by cutting out cubes of fondant icing and then rolling and squashing little balls of fondant icing to make the top of them. These were held on with a tiny bit of edible glue dabbed on with a cocktail stick.
Finish by icing on your child’s name and age. If they have any Lego Batman figures you can stand these on the cake too. Wash the figures in hot soapy water and dry fully. Fill one leg with some icing, push in a cocktail stick up the leg and allow it to dry hard before pushing them into the cake. This will make sure they don’t fall off. We didn’t have any figures this time so didn’t do this.
There you go, your huge Lego Batman Birthday Cake is complete!
Why not PIN this post about How to Make a Lego Batman Birthday Cake
Absolutely fabulous, well done ??