Lego Ninjago Birthday Cake Tutorial

I've noticed that my post for Joseph's 9th birthday is always one of my most popular posts and I couldn't think why until I checked my stats and discovered that most people find it by googling Lego Ninjago Birthday Cakes.

I had a look at the post again and realized that while it might be a good pic, it's maybe not all that helpful so thought I would write a quick tutorial just in case people might need a little help.

So, here goes...

I started by baking three sponge cakes in 8" pans and in 1 8" pudding basin according to this recipe
12oz sugar
4oz butter
12 tsp vanilla
2 lge eggs and 1 egg white
2oz SR flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 pint milk

Once the cakes were cooled, I stacked them together with butter cream and jam, then covered the whole thing in dark chocolate ganache made by bringing  21 fl oz cream to the boil and mixing in 2 lbs 10oz of dark chocolate.  This will make plenty to cover the cake and probably give you some left over to eat off the spoon...!  The reason for using the ganache is that it gives a really good, smooth finish for any decorating you want to do.  You should leave it overnight to cool, or put it in the freezer.  There are some tutorials on Youtube  if you need more help.

While the ganche was cooling I rolled out a rectangle of yellow fondant icing then cut some black icing to the shape of Zane's eyes, adding the little white glints.

I stuck the eyes to the yellow fondant and then the whole thing to the cake using some boiled apricot jam.  You can see in the picture below that it's a bit tacky. 

After that it was just a case of wrapping a large piece of white fondant around the cake to look like Zane's turban.  I used his new Zane for inspiration.  It's a bit messy but thankfully it looks ok!

Then just add one happy Birthday Boy!