I should have learned by now NOT to ask my son what kind of cake he wants for his birthday. When he announced he wanted a Minecraft cake this year I was pretty chuffed. After all, Minecraft is known for being blocky, pixelly and badly rendered so how hard could it be?*
Well, as you can see, it was harder than I thought. It’s surprisingly difficult to put together a block-shaped sponge cake. Sponge just isn’t designed to have hard edges and neither is buttercream. In hindsight if I’d made this cake out of very solid Christmas cake, marzipan and had a week to spend icing it I think it would have been better, but a fruit cake just isn’t going to cut it for an 8 year old’s birthday. Hey ho!
Even my Enderman (he’s the black monster) looks fed up and as for my Creeper, he’s so unimpressed he’s virtually falling over (actually he’s literally falling over).
So here’s what I’ve learned. If you’re going to make a Minecraft cake then these are my tips:
- Buy one
- If you can’t buy one be prepared to spend a LOT of time icing and assembling the darn thing
- If using a dense fruit cake is out of the question find the most robust and sponge cake recipe you can and use that.
- Once your cake is completely cold assemble it with buttercream and then leave the buttercream to go hard (and probably the cake slightly stale) before trying to cut it into a cube.
- Cut your cake into a completely perfect cube. You will need a ruler a bread knife, a very steady hand and a spirit level for this.
- Cut your squares of icing with the help of a ruler. You will need to measure them of they’ll look crap (like mine), then leave them to go hard before you try to stick them on.
- Brush the cake with warm jam NOT buttercream to attach your icing squares, otherwise you’ll have a slidy nasty bumpy mess (see below.
Good luck if you make one, and happy birthday to Theo who’s eight today!
*Never ask yourself that question. It’s like a harbinger of doom…

“It looks better from a distance” (no it really doesn’t)

My depressed-looking Minecraft monsters

Couch potato Enderman looking a bit fed-up

Little fingers poking and trying to lift off squares of icing…

Crazy paving on my Minecraft block
It’s not so bad, at least you tried Mary.
My daughters have grown up with bought cakes and have had no say in the matter. Your son will love it. Helene@revivalvintage
Thanks Helene! He did love it luckily, althought I think it was the figures which really caught his attention, thank goodness I thought of making those to distract from the wonky icing 😉
I loved reading your hints! It made me laugh. I too started out with…how hard could it be? 2 weeks out I am very nervous. Angry birds cake from last year seems a doddle to attempting individual symmetrical square blocks that stay will stay in place. I love the look of your cake, especially photo 3.
Good luck with your cake Fay! I’d love to see how it turns out! As my cake shows you can make anything look OK if you put Minecraft figures on it afterwards! If you don’t fancy making them out of icing you can now buy Minecraft figures in toy stores. Wish I’d known that at the time 😉