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:

1. Buy one
2. If you can’t buy one be prepared to spend a LOT of time icing and assembling the darn thing
3. If using a dense fruit cake is out of the question find the most robust and sponge cake recipe you can and use that.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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…