Luigi Cake

Here is a Luigi birthday cake I made for my boyfriend. Luigi is a character from the popular Mario video games, and I chose Luigi over Mario for two reasons; firstly because Mario wears red, and it takes a lot of food dye to make a deep red icing, otherwise it looks pink. Secondly, I had to continue the traditions of the birthday cakes from the past two years: a chocolate 9x13-inch rectangular cake with the design of a video game character mapped out on squares in an eight-bit pixel design - with the main color of the cake being green. That's right, coincidentally the past two cakes and characters have been primarily green. If it worked, why should I change it? 

I began with a new chocolate cake recipe I had not yet tried - a dark chocolate cake. I poured over my favorite new glaze to cover the cake in a shiny base on which to build the design (see Cocoa Glaze). Then I mapped out a pattern of 1/2 inch squares (12 across and 16 down) in the top center of the cake. Following an online sprite image I had printed out, I filled in the small squares with an upside-down basket weave tip using tan, chocoalte, green, and blue vanilla buttercream. At the end, I added a blue wave border around the top of the cake, a swirl green border around the bottom, and piped "Happy Birthday Julian!" in green. Then I heated a little extra ganache and recovered the top of the cake, to hide the lines of the grid I had mapped out that were not covered in buttercream. That is another advantage to ganache - you can always add another layer, and it sets just as evenly and nicely as the first.

I think last year's cake did turn out better - my buttercream was more cooperative, the design was bigger, and I just preferred it, but this one did tun out great as well. To check out the past cakes, follow these links (a link to Link, haha!). There is last year's {Link Cake}. and a little explanation on the designs and how I do it {8-Bit Pixel Design}. And this is the {Minecraft Cake} from two years ago.