Lego - Part 1

If you look back to the previous post, you will see that in order to get my most recent project done on time, I had created a plan.  Over the weekend, prior to the completion date, I had to complete the following:  Make chocolate lego bricks, create lego knobs, mix fondant colors for cakes, and make the cakes and freeze them.


We searched and searched for the perfect chocolate mold for the right size lego bricks.  We ended up going with this lego mold, which made the bricks still a little bigger than an actual lego, but pretty close.  Besides, who was going to complain about a little more chocolate?  It was also a bit of a challenge finding the right color chocolate.  We ended up ordering Mercken's brand, and it was most definitely hot pink.  Not exactly the color that the bride had asked me to match, so I had to mellow it out a bit with some red candy melts that I already had on hand.  I made bricks in both pink and brown.  The mold makes a 2 x 4 brick, but they seemed a little big for on top of a cupcake, so I cut each in half.  The edges that I had cut were not perfect, but I figured that would be the side I would stick into the frosting.  The key to making these was to really pound the mold with chocolate for quite a while in order to get all the air bubbles out, especially to get nice clean knobs on the lego bricks.

 So, how to make lego knobs for the cake?  I had my husband convert the size of an actual lego knob on an actual lego to our cake size legos (4" x 4").  I made a pan of rice crispy bars to the proper thickness and then cut each knob out with a 1 1/2" cookie cutter.  To get nice crisp edges it is best to wash the cookie cutter frequently.

After cut, I covered each rice crispy treat with chocolate.  It helps to have a smoother surface to apply fondant to.  Without it, the fondant takes on the shape of a rice crispy...bumpy.  After applying chocolate cut off any edges that are not smooth with a knife and they are ready to go.

Next, I covered each rice crispy treat with fondant.  Look at that!  Beautiful!  I was really worried about this, I thought I might end up with big creases, but it covered so easily.  Time consuming, but easily.  I rolled out the fondant quite thin and used a bigger size cookie cutter to cut it out.  Then I smoothed it out.  I used a little piping gel between the treat and fondant as glue. 

The final step was to pipe the word "LEGO" on each of these little guys.  I guess I didn't get a picture.  I'm sure it was getting late, and I just wanted to be done.  Again, my husband created a template (he's so good at that sort of thing) with the word "LEGO" as it appears on the actual knobs on the actual brick.  We placed the template on each knob and used a pin to mark where I would need to pipe.

Oh, I also baked 2 yellow 1/2 sheet cakes and 2 chocolate 9 x 13 cakes.  I read somewhere that it is best to freeze a cake in order to get nice crisp cuts.  I wanted as sharp of an edge on the lego bricks as possible, so I planned to freeze them.  Just in case I forget to mention it later, it was far too difficult to cut through the frozen cake.  I will not freeze a cake to cut it again.  Maybe if you are sculpting?  I'm not sure.

Stay tuned for the next steps...