New Make/Bake 24 - Lego Birthday Cake

Last week I decided to test my lovely Birthday Present - a new food mixer! Probably not the most exciting birthday present but considering baking is my new hobby I figured it would be something I'd never get bored off and could use for ages.

Previous to this I had a Kenwood Prospero which is the compact and one of the smallest Kenwood mixers. It was working fine, however it was a little on the small side as it only takes mixes with less than 6 eggs. Fine for smaller cakes but seeing as some of the cakes I've made have been 10 egg mixes, I figured an upgrade was required. I was torn between the KitchenAid (Retro glam and much loved by St Nigella) and the Kenwood (Sturdy, strong and Heston's weapon of choice). I wanted a machine that did more than just mixing and whisking and after much debate and research I decided on the Kenwood due to the huge variety or attachments (never ending presents!) and the reliability record - my mum has a Kenwood dating back from the 70s and it still works like it was new.

I picked a few ideas and then asked M to see how much my friends would "donate" so I could get my hearts desire. And to my great surprise, I got the dream machine, a Titanium Major Kenwood Chef.

My new mixer (aka Ken) is on the left and my old mixer on the right. Ken is a whopper, a beast and looks much prettier than I'd expected. He's really heavy so is going to sit on the side so he's always ready and raring to go.

For Ken's maiden voyage I tested him out by making my nephews birthday cake. My nephew is currently obsessed with Lego so my brother asked for a cake with a Lego theme. As I'm not really an expert I thought I'd try and make it simple so I made a cake decorated to look like a Lego brick!

I started with an 8" chocolate and vanilla marble cake.  Once cooled I split the cake and sandwiched and crumb coated it with vanilla buttercream. I also covered the cakeboard with Lego wrapping paper to add to the theme!

I then covered the cake with blue sugarpaste. To make the cake look more "brick-like" I covered some slices of swiss-roll with buttercream and sugarpaste and then stuck them to the top.

I was quite pleased with the final result. I still need to work more on smoothing my sugarpaste - I think I need to leave it quite thick. More practice soon I think....

The final result was a very happy and full-up little boy!