Meet Rick...A Minion Cake Tutorial

It's been far too long since we posted anything on our blog, so when I started in on this cake, I just knew that I had to take pictures along the way, and create a sort of "making of" pictorial. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

The first step took place about a week prior to cake day, when I created his eye and goggle. Some minions have two eyes, but our little guy had just one. His eye was created from gum paste, as was the goggle, which was a strip of paste, formed and allowed to dry around a ring cutter. After it had dried (a week later, right before starting on the actual cake), it was sprayed with silver metallic food spray, 2 coats. I then fit his eye in, and glued the edge to the ring with royal icing. The eye and goggle were then flipped over, and a couple of 1/2 toothpicks very carefully inserted, to assist in holding the eye to the body.

The day before cake day, I started by baking three 6" chocolate cakes, and a 6" dome cake. Depending on how tall you want the minion to be (they come in all shapes and sizes!), you could add a layer or two. I torted all the layers into two, giving me six layers of cake, plus the domed top. 

On cake day, all layers were then filled with raspberry buttercream.

The stacked and filled cake

The next step was to dirty ice the entire cake in chocolate buttercream, then chill until firm and set.

Completely crumb coated

 It was then time to give this little guy a mouth. I carved one in, and added a rolled piece of fondant, to create a lip. Then, back into the cooler he went, to set up once again.

Gettin' lippy ;)

I then covered the whole thing in yellow fondant, trimmed the excess, and smoothed him out.

At this point he kinda looks like a Simpson...

Next step was to give him some overalls. The legs were rolls of denim blue fondant, the overalls pieced together from the same colour. I used a quilting tool to give the edges of his overalls stitching, as well. The shoes, buttons and goggle strap were all fashioned from black fondant, as was the inside of his mouth.

Getting there...

Then, some arms and gloves...from fondant as well...and I must say, the hands were the hardest thing to create by far! It took a couple tries to figure out how to give him those rounded three fingered hands. In the end, they were a roll of black fondant, and then two smaller tear drop shaped pieces, attached onto the roll, and the seams smoothed out. I then added his hair (rolled pieces of gum paste, tinted black and picked with toothpicks; made at the same time as they eye and allowed to dry). I also replaced the typical "Gru" symbol with an "R" instead, for our birthday boy.

Nice 'do Rick!

He got a tongue too!

Blehhh!

And finally, his eye! This was attached using a liberal amount of royal icing, and was aided by the toothpicks previously inserted on the back of the eye.

He can see!!!

So here he is, our little minion, Rick :)

I know he will be enjoyed greatly... :)