My son celebrated a milestone birthday this past week, the big 3 – 0, so he needed a special cake. He said he would like to have a Creeper cake, so that is what I attempted to make for him. I must say this is probably the worst looking birthday cake I have ever made, but then again the Creeper is not an attractive character to work with. If you are a fan of Minecraft, then you know that the Creeper is an armless humanoid creature with short legs and empty eye sockets, a mouth with a sad expression and green skin with gray spots.
I decided the first thing I wanted to do was to bake a tasty cake, so that at least this creature would taste good, even if he didn’t look so good. I used an Ina Garten recipe for Double Chocolate Layer Cake.
Double Chocolate Layer Cake
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour, plus more for dusting
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. For a typical cake – butter two 8-inch pans and line with parchment paper; then butter the paper. Dust the pans with flour, tap out any excess. (For the Creeper I used eight 2 1/4 x 5-inch loaf pans and two 2 x 4-inch loaf pans, all buttered and lined with buttered parchment.)
In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt at low speed of an electric mixer. In a separate bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla; whisk together. Slowly beat the buttermilk mixture into the dry ingredients until just incorporated, then slowly beat in the hot coffee until fully incorporated.
Pour the batter into the prepared pans. Bake for 35 minutes, or until cake tests done with a toothpick. (The loaf pans for the Creeper baked for 17 minutes before testing done.) Let cakes cool in pan for 30 minutes, then invert the cakes onto a rack to cool completely. Peel off parchment paper.
I used eight small loaf pans and two mini loaf pans for the Creeper’s body parts. The pans need to be buttered and lined with parchment paper.
Before I started building the Creeper I crumb coated all the parts with buttercream frosting that I had tinted green. The recipe that I used for the buttercream is found here. I used the two mini loaf cakes as the feet, then stacked one of the larger loaves across them as the base for the body.
I stacked four of the loaves for the body, then used the remaining pieces to make the head, cutting some of the length off.
To make the gray pixels, I gridded a sheet of paper in 1-inch squares, then randomly cut out some of the squares. I used this sheet to apply a coat of Wilton spray-on food coloring mist in a silver color.
To give Creeper his features, I used black marshmallow fondant cut to shape. Creeper was a difficult character to work with. While I was working with his frosting he kept leaning toward me like he was ready to explode or something, so I kept sticking wooden dowel rods in to hold him in place. He ended up looking fatter than I wanted, but all I can say is the guy is full of chocolate cake!
All images and text copyright © 2021 Sugar, Spice and Spilled Milk/Aunt Nubby’s Kitchen.Blogspot.com
He does look creepy, and I bet he was delish!!
This was great Anita! Your son was probably very pleased with his birthday cake!
Boy, I am really out of it. I've never heard of him and I'm sorry but it does not look appetizing! LOL! What a lot of work you went to! I'm sure it was delicious though. You can't go wrong with Ina's recipes.
Very fun cake! Hope he had a great birthday!
This is awesome! My son is looking over my shoulder and says "cool cake". I bet your son loved it!
What a fun cake! What we won't do for our kids, right, Anita? Even though they're no longer really "kids", they always will be to us!! We'll be making and baking for them until we no longer can I suppose. It's that "mother love" thing!!
What a wonderful cake! It looks…creepy, lol. You did a great job Anita! Happy Birthday to him!