The Yellow Lego Birthday Cake

My kids always have very specific ideas of what they want their birthday cakes to look like.  You may remember the tie dye peace sign cake of earlier in the year.  This time it was Tom Thumb's turn and he requested a yellow Lego cake.  Here was the inspiration that he provided:

And of course the cake had to be chocolate.  Chocolate cakes are such a pain in the you know what to decorate because you always have brown crumbs trying to sneak into your frosting.  Anyway--- if you're looking to create a Lego cake of your very own, here is how I did it.

First, I baked a 9X13 cake using a mix and following the directions.  After the cake was done, I popped it out and cut it down into a smaller rectangle and reserved the leftover pieces.  I used a foil covered upside down cookie sheet as my work surface.

Next, I made a double batch of buttercream frosting following the Wilton recipe. 

To get the correct shade of Lego yellow, I used about 1 1/2 tubes of yellow gel food coloring with a few extra squirts of red.  It took quite a bit of trial and error to get the color just right.

Then, I free hand cut circles for the top of the cake from the reserved cake.  

This is the one change I would make in the future if I ever made this cake again.  My sister in the past has made a similar cake, but made a separate batch of muffins and cut off the muffin tops and used the muffin bottoms to make the circles.  I was trying to make it easier on myself by skipping the muffin making step, but it ended up just being harder.  I neglected to remember that as soon as you cut into the cake there are crumbs.  Crumbs, crumbs, and more crumbs!  Chocolaty crumbs that want to jump into my frosting!  In the case of the muffin bottoms, you have a mostly crusty baked exterior to work with; thus, less crumbs.  The moral of the story --- make yourself a batch of muffins for the circles.  You'll be happy that you did.  

Even with my error in judgment, I managed to pull it together.  Some crumbs got in the frosting.  Whatcha gonna do?

This is a cake and not a box so it did not look like a perfectly smooth and rectangular Lego.  I probably could have gotten a smoother exterior with fondant, but I am not a fan of the taste. I'm going to wait until the baking world comes up with a better tasting fondant before I give up my buttercream.  Needless to say, it wasn't perfect so my star tip came to the rescue to hide some of my mistakes, and I wrote the Lego logo with a small round tip on the top of each circle.

Happy 5th birthday to my little Lego maniac!