Minion Hawaiian Hula Skirt Cake

Don't you just love those Minion???  

So adorable, so amusing, 

and soooo tasty when they are in cake form.

Another of my cousins requested this cake for her daughter's second birthday.  The birthday girl is in love with Minions, and since I love Minions too, this was a very fun cake to make.

If you have read any of my other posts, you know that time management is my Achilles heal: things always take 3 times as long as I expect them to.  So to get ahead of the curve, I made a few of the cake decorations in advance.

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For the coconut bathing suit top I just cut out a circle from brown gumpaste, and then scored and cut the top of the gumpaste to make it look fuzzy and hairy like a real coconut.  I kept it in the cookie cutter so it wouldn't pull out of shape while I slashed up the top. 

Then I put it on top of a light bulb while it dried so it would have a "C" cup instead of a barely "A" cup.

Next came the Minion goggles, again out of gumpaste.  Here is a view of the back side of the goggles.  I don't have a picture, but to make sure the goggles would wrap snugly around the finished cake I placed the piece on the curved side on an 8" cake dummy while the gumpaste dried. After it dried, I painted it with some edible silver luster dust that I mixed with vodka to form a thin paste.  The luster dust made the goggles really shiny and sparkly.

The flowers were also gumpaste.  I used the FMM Hawaiian flower cutter set and some Wilton stamens for the center.

The cake itself was a two tiered, double barrel, 8" tower of white almond goodness.  The bottom tier was three layers, and the top tier was 4 layers counting the carved layer that made the dome shaped head. 

For the base of the top tier I used a foam core board instead of a regular cardboard round.  The foam core is more expensive, but it is also much, much sturdier than cardboard (especially when the cardboard gets damp and soft and starts to bend).  In my mind the extra 2 bucks is worth the price. 

In total the cake was about 11" high.  

Next comes the fondant.  I used Mona Lisa Fondant for this cake and tinted it using Wilton's Golden Yellow.  This is a great fondant if you live in an area with high humidity.  It stays dry as a bone and doesn't get clammy or gooey even on the most humid days.

Okay, time to start decorating.  First I made some hands, feet, and spiky hair pieces.

Made the eyes too...

Then I started cutting leaves for the grass hula skirt.  I actually made three different shades of green, but I guess I didn't make the shades different enough cause once they were on the cake they all looked the same.  I used a generic Wilton leaf cutter, and then cut the edges to make it look more tropical.

Before placing the leaves on the cake I marked the cake itself using a Wilton Cake Marker tool.  I did this to make sure my line stayed straight and didn't meander up and down as I moved around the cake. 

Then I just started placing the leaves.  When all of the leaves were in position, I places a narrow length of fondant on top of the leaves to simulate the waist band of the hula skirt.

I worked from the base up.  The legs/feet first, hula skirt next, then the coconut bikini top.  On the back of the Minion I looped the fondant strings for the bikini top to make it look like the strings were tied together.

Next came the mouth.  Hummm.... I didn't like the first mouth I put on the Minion so I took it off and just left the space blank till I decided on a new style of mouth to use.  Eyes came next.  I actually placed the eye balls inside the goggles and then placed the goggles and eyes onto the cake.  Once the eyes were positioned I removed the goggles and put them in a safe place.  I was afraid the fragile goggles would fall off and break while I was working on the cake!  I am somewhat of a klutz.

Next I put on an improvised mouth.  I really wanted an open mouth on my Minion.  Something with a cheeky grin and shining white teeth, but I settled on just a rope of fondant.  I also put a green head band on my Minion.  My gumpaste hibiscus wouldn't stay in place, so I needed something to hold the flowers up.  In hind-sight I should have put the flowers on a toothpick so I could stick them directly into the cake, but DUH, I forgot.

In the end the head band held the flowers in place, so no biggie.

The arms went on last.  I thought I would have a problem keeping them in place, but surprisingly the top of the floppy arms stuck to the main cake with just a touch of water.  I just used a little bit of plastic wrap to keep them away from the body as they dried,

So here is the finished cake.  I pulled another all-nighter with this cake, but the birthday girl seemed happy.  (Even though the goggles were positioned a little crooked and one eye lid was a bit droopy.  How come I never see these things till I look at the pictures!!!)

Happy Decorating,

Carol