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Baby Block Cake Recipe and Design IdeasThe baby block cake below was kindly submitted by one of our readers like yourself... Cake Submitted by Heather H. from The Colony, Texas.
A friend was having a First Birthday party for her son and had a very specific cake in mind. The theme of the party was nursery rhymes and she wanted a baby block cake to serve guests and then a miniature version of the large cake for the birthday boy. I used Betty Crocker's Golden Vanilla flavor cake mix to bake five 8"x8"x2" square cakes (this took about 6 cake mixes). I tested the cake with a toothpick – look for a slightly tacky result – you don't want the toothpick to come out completely clean! Once the cake test was done, I removed it from the oven and immediately placed a clean kitchen towel over it and pressed gently all over the ABC block cake. I then layered a couple more towels over it to trap all the moisture in the cake as it cooled. Assembly of large block using four of the 8" square cakes: I placed one 8" square cake on a 10" square cake board and frosted the top. Next I added another 8" square cake on top of the first, and then frosted the top of 2nd cake. I cut four wooden dowels to the height of the two stacked cakes and inserted 1 ½" in from each corner. Now I did the exact same thing with cakes 3 and 4: I placed one 8" square cake on an 8" square cake board and frosted the top, then added another 8" square cake on top. Then I placed this second stack of cakes on the 8" cake board on top of the first stack on the 10" board. So now my baby block cake is 4 layers high, but there is a cake board between cakes 2 and 3 for ease of serving – we would be serving a two layer cake, not a four layer cake. I then frosted all four layers with white buttercream frosting. Recipe: Mix on low speed: 2 cups Crisco with 2 Tbsp meringue powder. In a measuring cup combine ½ cup water, 1 tsp clear vanilla extract, 1 tsp clear butter extract, ½ tsp almond extract, 1 tsp salt. Alternate adding 2 lbs powdered sugar and the extract mixture a little at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition. Do not beat for too long as air bubbles will get trapped in the frosting and will make it harder to smooth the frosting on the cake. Decoration of Large block: I colored butter cream frosting five different colors for the five sides of the block: red, blue, green, purple, and orange. The baby's initials are J D C and then the mother wanted a number 1 and a star. So each side of the block was one of those five characters. J was on top for the baby's first name, D was on the left side for the middle initial, C was on the right side for the last initial, number 1 was on the front since it was the 1st birthday, and the star was on the back. I just free handed the block letters and numbers – I traced it out in the frosting with a toothpick first so that I could go back and smooth out anything I didn't like. When I was satisfied with what I had drawn, I traced the character with tip #4 in that side's color of frosting and then filled in with tip #21 stars in the same color of frosting. So the J was traced and filled in with blue frosting and then I bordered the top square with a tip #21 shell border. The C was traced and filled in with orange frosting and then I bordered that whole square with a tip #21 shell border, and repeated this process for each side in each color. Now for the small block: I cut the final 8" square cake into 4 equal 4"x4" squares. On a 6" square cake board, I stacked three of the 4"x4" cakes with butter cream frosting between each layer (my husband got to eat the 4th piece!) and then frosted the entire stack with white buttercream. I then decorated the small block to look just like the large block using the same characters and color on each side as on the large block. I used a tip #18 and just free handed each character in a smaller version. I bordered each square side with the matching frosting color with a tip #18 shell border. This was a fun presentation that received rave reviews!
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