Ultimate Superhero Cake

For the little guy’s birthday party we decided on a superhero theme.  And while perusing the Everything board on Pinterest I came across the most awesome superhero cake.  I pinned it to my Kid Stuff board thinking it would be a great birthday cake.  Here’s the one I found:

Picture from www.lilaloa.com

Pretty awesome hey?!?  Well, I made another rookie Mom mistake (I’ve made many) which was to show the little guy this picture. Oops, now he’s expecting this awesome cake and I’m not sure my decorating skills are up for the challenge, but how hard could it really be?!?!

About a week before the party I decided the above cake, while awesome, would be way too much cake for our party of 20.  So I decided on a square cake and because I’m a perfectionist I made a model of what I was thinking.

I added Superman for the 4th side and I had no idea what to do for the actual side and originally thought of putting his undies on there(but as you will soon see I changed my mind).

The most difficult part I was foreseeing was that I wanted 4 different colors on the top (and sides) and wasn’t sure how to make them come together seamlessly.  But I’m creative, so I decided to use thick wooden skewers to make an X on the top and at each corner along the sides.  After adding a crumb coat I pushed the skewers into the frosting just enough so they didn’t slide around.

I used a ruler to smooth out the top and then followed up with the Viva paper towel method.  “The What?” you ask.  Another recent pin I found was that you can use a white Viva paper towel (only Viva brand works I guess) and lay it on the surface of the buttercream and very lightly smooth it with your hand.  There are a few You Tube videos about it like this one if you want to check it out.

After I finished all 4 sides I removed the skewers and set it outside (it was only 18 degrees out, but if you have the space then set it in the freezer for about 5-10 min).  The skewers left a fairly large space between all the colors so using the same Viva paper towel method I was able to smooth the colors towards each other and got a perfect seam.

Next up was the actual design on the cake.  I use a toothpick to first mark the design on the cake and then fill in with the frosting.  I started with Spiderman since I knew it would probably be the easiest of them all.

Then I worked on the top of Superman.  I first outlined with black then tried to fill in the red and yellow.  I would not recommend this.  Instead, start with the red, then leave a space and add the yellow, and finally fill in with the black. I spread it with the spatula as well as I could and then smoothed with the paper towel. I pressed a little too hard though, so be careful if you do that.

At this point I had already been working on the cake for 5 hours (yes, 5 hours) and decided it was time for bed. 

The next night I still wasn’t sure about the rest of Superman, so I got started on the Hulk.  For this I started by tracing out the hand with a toothpick and then added large mounds of frosting for each of the fingers and added green blobs all around the rest.  Then using a brownish color I added a thin line around all the blogs and to define the fingers.  Using a toothpick I spread it around picking up some of the green and trying to blend it.  Then I filled in the cracks.

For Batman I traced out buildings and windows and then piped the outline and filled in with black.  I smoothed it out as much as I could and then added the yellow windows. 

For the logo on top I first added the yellow and then the black (see I’m learning from my Superman mistakes).  I also added white dots for stars.

Last up was that pesky Superman side.  The buildings on the batman side was fairly easy so I decided to make light grey ones.  I also added in a bird and a plane (get it?!?).

Whew! This took another 3 hours, so in all to decorate it took me 8 hours! But the look on the little guy’s face when he saw it was all worth it.