Another year, another birthday!!!!

Coming back with a funny and delicious birthday cake, which I made for my sons 3rd Birthday. He is a big fan of the minions these days, so a minion cake was on order. To make the cake look like a minion I was using coloured fondant for the cake decoration. There are many ways to make a special theme cake, but I find fondant is the most easiest one to be used. These days you can buy it almost everywhere, the prices are OK and they come in different colours too. Fondant is easy to work with and you can create and experience as much as you want. Once you know how to deal with this delicate sugar paste you will find yourself creating funny, elegant and sometimes even crazy cake creations. If you liked play with "play dough" as a kid you will love working with fondant...

Vanilla sponge cake

(I used 15 cm round baking form)

• 3 eggs
• 100 g sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 50 g butter melted
• 2 tablespoons greek yogurt
• 100 g flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180 C and grease and line your baking form with baking paper. Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract with an electrical mixer till double in size and pale in the colour. Add butter and yogurt, combine everything gently. Sift flour and baking powder into the egg mixture and fold it gently in. Pour the batter into the baking dish and bake for 25-30 minutes. Make the wooden stick test. Take the cake out of the oven and let is cool on the cooling rack for about 5 minutes, then take it our of the baking form and let is cool off completely.

You will get 2 layers out of this portion. I used 5 layers for my cake, hence I repeated the process 3 times. Level 4-5 cake layers and leave one unleveled using the round shape later to create a round shape of the minion head. 

Mascarpone frosting

• 500 g mascarpone cheese
• 50-100 g powdered sugar (depending how sweet you would like to have the frosting)
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cacao powdered
• some tablespoons of heavy cream

In a bowl mix together mascarpone cheese, one part of powdered sugar and cacao. Taste and add more powdered sugar if you would like to have it a bit more sweeter. Gradually add heavy cream to get a smooth consistency of the frosting. It should be creamy and easy to apply on, but not too runny.

You can soak the cake layers with a syrup (take some spoons of your favourite marmalade and mix it with some water) to make the layers being more moist and fruity. Frost the cake, take some tablespoons of the frosting between the layers. Cover all the side and the top of the cake with the remaining frosting. Put the cake in to the refrigerator, while preparing the fondant. When you do work with fondant use powdered sugar to prevent the fondant from sticking. To stick the fondant together, use water...best you use a small "painting brush" with a very little amount of water. Cover the cake completely with yellow fondant, which will be the base and continue decorating the cake. If you never work with fondant and have no experience how to cover the cake or apply fondant decoration, you will find plenty of videos in "youtube" for it. 

Enjoy!