Minecraft party cake and ideas

I had a Facebook message a few days ago from a lady who admired one of my cakes. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the message and being a bit inexperienced on the nuances of Facebook usage I can’t seem to find or retrieve the message. This lady mentioned that she wanted to make a Minecraft cake for her grandchild. This comment has prompted me to write this post about the Minecraft Creeper Cake I made for Michael’s birthday two years ago. Minecraft was then, and still is, a huge hit amongst the pre-teenage kids. Michael was very definite about what he wanted for this particular birthday party. He wanted a Minecraft Creeper Cake and a Ghast piñata. Hmmmm, slightly challenging at the time for me who knew virtually nothing about the game other than that it was age appropriate for Michael to play.

I did a bit of research on the topic and learned what these extraordinary pixel type creatures were. A selection of the things I made for the party are set out below.

Minecraft Creeper cake

In case you don’t know, as I didn’t, Minecraft Wiki describes creepers as “one of the most unique and iconic hostile mobs found in Minecraft. A creeper can easily be recognized by its tall vertical structure (roughly the size of a player), green, pixelated skin, and four legs.” Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

Anyhow, this is the creeper that I managed to produce and this is how I made it:

I baked one medium sized square cake and two more square cakes that were slightly larger than the single cake. I then baked a large rectangular cake which I thin cut in half. The smaller square cake was for the head and the two larger square cakes were for the feet. The rectangular cake was for the body. I laid the cake in the desired design on a large piece of thick cardboard. I made a double quantity of vanilla butter cream and used this to join the cakes together as per the picture above and to cover the entire cake in a thin layer of butter cream. I then coloured fondant in two shades of green, a light cream soda green and a darker leaf green. I also coloured a small amount of black fondant and left some white. Using a ruler I [very painstakingly] cut out millions [well, maybe only a hundred, but it felt like millions] of squares of 5cm by 5cm to completely cover the creeper. I made the two eyes and the rectangular mouth from the squares of black fondant.

I then had my giant creeper cake and just needed to add a bit of decoration. I made a border for the cardboard using Chomp chocolates and used crushed chocolate Flakies to make the dirt around the cake. I assembled the pixelated spiders from Chomp chocolate bars cut to size, 1/2 a bar for the bodies and 1/4 of a bar for each segment of the eight legs (16 segments in all).

I cut the axe and the sword out of fondant using templates for both that I downloaded for free from the internet. I then decorated both of these with small squares of light blue fondant.

Ghast piñata

Michael also wanted a Ghast piñata which I was not able to find anywhere locally. I resorted to making the piñata.

I used a square cardboard box for the basis of the piñata. Michael and I made paper mache using newspaper torn into long strips and soaked in a mixture of water and wood glue (I used three bottles of wood glue in the end). We then laid the strips of soggy newspaper all over the box in a fairly thick layer and left it in the sun to dry for a week. I then used a small saw to cut a flap in the back of the box so that I could insert the sweets. Once the sweets were in the completely dry piñata, I sealed the flat shut and we spray painted the whole contraption with a few layers of white spray paint. I used crinkle paper to make the red eyes and mouth and the long floaty strips that hung below. I bought a thick dhal stick for the kids to use to break the piñata. If you decide to try this, please make sure that you take good care while the kids are brandishing the stick. I make them all line up and don’t allow any crowding. I start with the smallest children so that they all get a turn and only allow one whack each.

Other party games

I made up two other party games for this party. The first one was knock the creepers head off. I made the creeper on the left out of three boxes of different sizes and covered them with a few layers of green crinkle paper. I added some further light green coloured squares of crinkle paper to give the pixelated effect. I made the mouth and eyes out of black crinkle paper. The bottom [feet] box was filled with stones to make it heavy and I glued the body firmly to the feet. The head box was left loose. The children had three goes to throw a bean bag at the head and knock it off from a distance.

The second game was only for children of nine years old and older and was played under strict supervision. The children through a dart at the creeper head balloons. Inside each balloon was a folded paper with a small prize on it.

The twenty five kids that attended the party had a total blast. I did the whole party on my own which is not that recommended. I was completely finished afterwards.

Robbie and Michael Cheadle are the co-authors of the Sir Chocolate Book series

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