Ninjago Cake for a special kid's seventh birthday

Tah dah! The much awaited post is finally up. After weeks of research and preparation, I introduce to you all the Ninjago Cake. Thoughts? Well, I can let you know that the kids received it very well, too well in fact that they all wanted a price of the sugar legos that were placed around the cake. Thank God the Birthday Boy was able to calm them down. 

The weather was too hot for my liking leading up towards the day of the party. The humid weather made it difficult to handle the rolled fondant that I had purchased. Particularly the Red Fondant used to cover the entire cake. It kept breaking as I was trying to lift it even though I had worked a bit more corn flour into it to stabilize its consistency. In the end, I just worked with baking paper and flipped the rolled fondant onto the cake. I must say the fondant smoother is God send it comes to smoothing down the rough edges. So we got there, eventually. 

So what lies beneath the rolled fondant. I used a dense, fudgy chocolate cake recipe that did not call for any eggs. It was vegetarian friendly, not nut friendly because the chocolate that was used to bake the cake did say it may contain traces of nuts. Two seven inches were used for the bottom layer and one five inch was used the the top. This cake was meant to serve only 30 people. But I would say, after baking it, that it could easily serve 40- 45 people given that the cake was awesomely rich. 

I didn't want to use buttercream this time round to ice the cake. Only because my favourite recipe is the old fashion buttercream, which uses icing sugar, milk, vanilla and butter. To achieve a smooth finished, I thought chocolate ganache would be a better choice. And indeed it was. It was easy to work with as both and icing and filling for the cake. Because dark chocolate was used, it balanced out the sweetness of the cake. Overall, the cake was moist, fudgy and not at all sickly sweet. Comment below if you would like me to share the recipe. 

As for the design, I simply search on Google for other examples. And by combining the designs, I came up with this one. Less is more hence I kept the design simple. The intention was for the spotlight to be on the top tier and that was achieved.

As for the height of the cake, it would be been around 30 cm.

You may also see from the photos that I also used my favourite chocolate cupcake recipes to make cupcakes to surround the cake. It could have been decorated with more sugar legos, but I just kept it simple with piped swirl using ganache.

I'm definitely looking forward to doing more of these novelty cakes. What I look forward to baking next time round is a princess cake with a dome cake for the dress. Can't wait for an order of that kind to be placed.

Have more questions in relation to this cake? Comment below as I look forward to helping out.

In the meantime, happy baking!