Cake Anatomy

 I scoured the internet for a good scratch yellow cake recipe....lots of different types, but it's soooo hard to find a good one that's not super heavy or really crumby....so...I mixed a couple of recipes and was actually pretty pleased with the results!


Basic Yellow Cake:


4 eggs
1 cup butter, room temp
3 cups cake flour (make your own by subing 2 Tbs corn starch for 2 Tbs of flour per cup)
1 3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cup buttermilk (make your own by adding a smidge of vinegar to reg milk)


Cream butter and sugar until fluffy, about 3 min.  Add eggs one at a time, scrape sides of bowl.  Add vanilla.   


Sift your flour (if making your own cake flour sift it 4 or 5 times to get the corn starch fully incorporated), baking powder, and salt.


Add flour mixture, alternating with the butter milk...starting and ending with flour.


Pour batter into prepared pans (buttered with parchment paper on the bottom, then buttered on the paper).


Bake 350 for 30 min...Do Not Over Bake!!!   


***When using a large sheet cake pan (mine was 15x11), it is adviced to use a heat core deally...which means extra $$$...But, you can do the same thing with one of those flower making nails from wiltons (flat round area where you'd make your flower goes down, straight "nail" part goes up..then pour the batter around it).   These make baking a little more even....I also turned my temp down to 325 for the big pan and increased my baking time to like 55 min...just watch it!


First batch of batter made all of Lego Indiana's extra "parts":

 My coffee mugs made the perfect lego head shape, the flowered bowl for the hat, and 2 ramikins for the lego hands.   The arms in the picture below were the sides leftover from shaping the lego body.   It took 2 batches to fill my 15x11 pan.

 Crumb coat everything.   It will harden up a bit while you make your next batch of frosting.

 The easiest way to "frost" with multiple colors on a cake is to preoutline the areas with the tip of your knife.   I marked off the pant/shirt line and where I wanted the jaket to be.   (the extra height of the foot area was just a scrap piece from the arms)

 The head and hands were frosted ivory, the satchel, belt, and headband were the same brown color as the jacket with juuuust a little bit of red thrown in to offset it a bit.


Add the arms and decide that they're freakishly long (after you add the hands of course!)

 For the brim of the hat I used a small tortilla, microwaved with the edge over the side of an upside down bowl to give it the curve.  Frost and put onto the lego head.   Add the hat, frost to cover the seams.   Add your extras like headbands and belts.   Pipe in details...black for eyes, mouth and pocket/shirt details.   The facial hair was just brown dots piped on (don't ask me why, it's just how the lego guy looks!)

For the whip, I braided yarn and made a handle from brown duct tape.


Stab him with an 8 candle and you have instant birthday happiness!!!!!