Lego Ninjago Cake

J has been a Lego fan for years so logically he got into the Ninjago story. When I heard Ninjago cake, I thought "I've got this, yellow cake with red draped bands on top with back eyes, sorted!". That's when hes started describing his cake "the temple with Master Wu on top and bla bla bla..." to be honest I freaked at temple! Gone were my dreams of a quick and easy cake...

After a lot of avoiding thinking about it (it was way too hot!), I only had a week ahead of me and no idea how I was going to pull it off. Good news is we have plenty of Ninjago figures! I just had to figure out a way to make a temple... The ones I saw online were very intricate with painted dragons etc. Not my thing, and P (aka Daddy ) wasn't keen on having the pressure of painting dragons all around the cake an hour or two before the party! Back to the temples. I ended up picking the monastery from season 1: simple lines and a lot that could be made ahead. Bingo!

I stacked some tins to get an idea of the finished size and made templates for the decorations. I mixed tylo powder to some fondant and got to work as soon as I could so they would be dry. I used half toothpicks to hold the banners in place and also put bamboo skewers behind the main gate (not sure I needed them but I wasn't going to take any chances!).

-cake: 3 x 20cm cakes, recipe from the blog Life Love and Sugar (here)
Easy recipe and it worked out well.
-Mixed berries fruit curd: 400 fruit puree, 2 1/2 Tbsp sugar, 2Tbsp cornflour, a bit of lemon juice
mix everything in a small pan then slowly heat it up to thicken, stirring constantly. let it cool down, covered
-American buttercream: 250g butter, 500g icing sugar
-sugar syrup: 60g sugar, 120g water
- fondant: 600g to cover the cake (plus extra for the board and decorations)

I really enjoyed making this cake. Taking my time to come up with a doable design and templates really paid off and it looked amazing! (even if I say so myself! :p ) In case you're wondering what to do with the figures: they shouldn't be in contact with the cake so I simply rolled a bit of fondant to act as a barrier. Before slicing the cake, simply remove the figure with its little ball of fondant and it's all good.

The big empty space on the top was for the candles, J needed 7 this year!