Eating That Elephant

Magic The Gathering Cake

I made this cake for my son’s 14th birthday, held at Gryphon Games and Comics, our local game store. I thought I would post how I did it, in case anyone is interested in trying it out.

Main Cake Ingredients

Two of the guests couldn’t have gluten, and one couldn’t have dairy.  My son requested a lemon cake, so we followed the directions on Pamela’s GF cake mix, two packages, and made 2 9.5 x 11 cakes.  We needed to level the cakes to make a flat surface, so we sliced the “bump” off the top of each.

We started with a natural-style icing, but it was sticky and not very opaque, so we used it as a glaze. We  flavored it with lemon and spread it on one layer as “filling”.

Next we placed the un-iced layer upside down on top of the other, and iced the two. This “crumb layer” stops the cake from crumbling when the frosting is put on later:

IMPORTANT: Next the cake was frozen overnight, to set the crumb layer and give a hard surface to decorate on.

The next day when the cake was frozen solid, I mixed the frosting colors. I don’t have pictures, but each color was mixed in a small bowl and then each of the accent colors were put into a ziplock baggie.

I used the following colors: Olive brown, black, orange-brown, light blue, dark brown, purple, and white.

The background is frosted in olive green, with an orange-brown oval in the center (I cut out an oval from paper and then carved a thin line around it with a knife to mark it). Then after cutting off a small amount of one corner of the plastic bag, I piped on a purple outline around the oval.

The baggies could be put in either warm or ice water to get them at the right consistency:

I found a picture of the MTG logo and enlarged it to the right size for the cake, and printed out the portion that has the words “Magic The GatheringTM”.  Then I cut out the inside light blue color to make a template.  I gently laid the template on the cake, and filled in the spaces with light blue frosting, then carefully lifted it off. I did the same thing with the rectangle at the bottom.

“Deckmaster” was also piped in, referring to a printout of the logo for letter shapes.

Next I piped in the outline for the Magic, and added “The GatheringTM” underneath:

Finishing touches include frosting the edges in black, creating a rectangular indent with a knife, and adding min-m&ms (the white and black painted with frosting).