How to make a minion cake. Despicable me is a great film and kids will love this cake.

Author:
help for teachers
Updated:
Oct 2, 2013

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What do you think to a minion cake?

Minions are soooooooooooo cool

Despicable me is one of the most profitable films ever made. And for good reason. The minions in both 1 and 2 are great fun and generate some super funny moments. They have a bigger part within the second film than the first and for good reason. Like me, many people thought these lovable characters were the best part of the film.

I'm a big kid but don't take just my word for it. Ask any child you know what they think of these great characters.

Their answer will be something like they love them. So making a cake that looks like one will make a child's party. It is easier to do than you would think too. I had no proper equipment and experimented with a few things but the finished article was really good. My 10 year old daughter helped out too and had a great time in doing it.

Take a look and see what you think:

There are three ways in which you could tackle this cake.

Three ways range from easy to complicated and I will talk my way through all three.

Just remember that I am no expert and will just share in what I have experimented with and had a surpising good time in doing so.

1. Easy option: Round cake which is decorated.

This is the easiest way in which to create a minion cake.

Basically you have to cook a round cake first. Let this cool before you work with it.
Then you need to place the yellow icing all the way around the cake. (If you need tips on how to do this then please take a look at the video I have included towards the end of this hub.)
Then you need to add the detailed icing. There are a few methods you can use to 'glue' the icing onto the side. Egg whites, wet icing or my favourite heated jam.
Cut the other icing into the required shapes, coat the back of it with the heated jam or other 'glue' and then place against the iced cake where you want it. Hold it there for a while until you are sure it is stuck.
I then noticed that I had a few cracks in the icing - it was my first time after all! The way I repared this was to get a little water, wetting my finger with it I rubbed lightly on the icing. The icing then dissolved with the water and was then moved into the cracks - once it dried then the cracks were filled in.
I would recommend doing the clothes first. With this minion cake I cut a rectangle for the front. I then cut a long strip for the straps. I placed the rectangle at the front first and held it in place for a while. The straps I then placed on one corner of this and worked it around the cake to the other corner.
I then made sausage shapes for the arms and 'glued' them onto the side too, just underneath the blue of the straps on either side. This secured the blue band a little more.
The silver of the goggles was sprayed with shimmer spray after it was cut into shape. This did take a lot of coats though even though I didn't have much icing to coat.
I have to admit, I struggled to get a nice black from colouring icing, like I have suggested above so the black was shop brought. But this was roled into a long strip, round buttons and the fists. Using the last parts of it I moulded spikes for the hair and the mouth, by making a narrow sausage.
The tongue was fun to make. Using pink icing, mould into shape and using a knife cut down the middle to create the look.
The eyes were made by just cutting out round shapes out of the icing I had left and a the pupils were just moulded from brown icing (mixing food colours made this colour!)
This was all done while I left the yellow to set on the cake.
Then I added the other icing by glueing it to the right places. Each time holding it in place for a while.
The last thing I did was to get a fork and push this into the icing on the blue clothes to create a textured look.

It took me some time to ice this cake, probably due to it being my first time so I was very careful and kept on checking myself but I hope you agree that it came out really well.

3. Medium option: minion laying down

This cake is the cake we actually did for a birthday party and the child loved it. She was very impressed and the smile we got when she saw it was the best part of the night.

I have to admit that I had never iced a cake before trying this one and I had to try a few times in order to leave a nice flat surface. I will show you a few tricks that I picked up during the making of this cake.

To make this cake I first cooked a round 8 inch cakes. I also cooked a rectangular cake.
The tops of each were cut off so they all had a flat top to work with.
The rectangle cake was placed in the middle and the round one was cut in half and placed either side of it.
This was all stuck together using buttercream and then shaped using a knife.
Then it was pretty much following the same method as described above.

A few exceptions being:

Adding legs - this is just a solid piece of icing to make the blue legs and black shoes. The blue legs were glued to the body by using the water technique described above - wet the icing at the top and place it on the icing of the body. Once this is done then wet your finger and rub lightly over the parts you want to join. It will take a bit of time to do this but it will ensure that the icing won't fall off.
A pocket was added and decorated to the front to add more detail. Again I used a fork to decorate it with the holes that look like stiching.
The google was improved by making it stand out. Again I used a lot of the shimmer spray, a lot more than I though, but it is effective.
The eye detail was improved by cutting out a small square in the brown of the eye and putting a shite patch in there. Also the pupil was added using black.
The mouth this time was just a draw on pen.

Think of the icing as plasticine and , as long as you don't work it too much, you can create some fantastic things. The trick is to make sure you know what you are going to create and do it quickly. Once you work it too much it will dry out and crack. Adding a little water will improve the life of it but too much and it becomes sticky and very hard to work with.

3. Hard option: minion sitting up

This option is the hardest to do due to trying to get the detail on the side of the cake but if you are confident then why not have a go.

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The reason this is the hard one is that you are decorating a lot of the sides on this. This can be tricky if you are not used to icing but once you can do it then it can be a lot of fun and you can create a lot of wonderful effects.

This minion was created by baking 3 round 8 inch cakes.
The tops of which were then sliced off.
The rest were sliced in two and then coated with buttercream.
They were then stacked on top of each other to the desired height.
The top (head) was then cut into the required shape by shaving off the sides.

A lot of how I created this one I have described already. What I have tried with this though is to again add more detail. Using a knife you can draw patterns into the icing when it is stuck on - like that of the eyes.

How do you colour ready made icing?

Buying ready made icing is a lot easier for us novices. It is very easy to change the colour of the standard white that can be bought in bulk too. Lets face it, you are going to be making a minion so you are going to be needing a lot of yellow, plus a lot of blue.

So how do we do this?

It is actually quite easy. If you take the required amount of icing and then knead into a ball (this will soften the icing so it is easier to work with).
The next step is to make a small hole in the ball by just pressing a finger into the top.
This will be used to add a few drops of the colouring you have.
Then you knead the ball again until the colour is consistent throughout.
These steps should be repeated until you have the required colour of icing. The darker the colour you want then the more times you will have to repeat it.

NOTE: If you start off by adding too much colouring then you will soften the icing too much so it will become far too sticky and hard to work with so it is best to just add a few drops at a time even if this will take you far longer to do it. Better to take time on it than mess it up though.

I suggest that you wait to make the icing while the cake is cooking in the oven. That way the icing will still be fresh by the time the cake cools and will not dry out and become harder to work with and also when it dries out it will also crack when you are trying to work with it and ice the cake.

You will also need to know about how to colour the icing

How do you ice a cake?

This is something I watched before I attempted the cakes. It isn't as easy as she makes it look but I do think I was successful in what I achieved.

One thing you will need to be able to do is ice the cake. Here is a brilliant video to show you the basics

For each of these cakes I used the fluffy and delicious chocolate cake recipe that I have also added on here:

Take a look at my other hubs to find out what types of cakes you can use for the base of this brilliant cake. I choose a chocolate cake (the recipe is on my hubs) but you could use a sponge if you wanted, again the recipe is on my hubs.