A week from now will be my son’s birthday. Since I will be busy arranging birthday bags for his classmates, I decided to bake his cake now. My son loves watching videos portraying people playing games on youtube. Recently he has taken a liking to the game, Among Us. If anyone here is internet savvy, Among Us is an online multiplayer, social deduction game published and developed by an American game studio, Innersloth. It has gotten so popular, that a lot of youtubers have uploaded videos after videos of them playing it. I have never played it, but it looks fun.
The point of the game is to find an alien imposter trying to kill every astronauts on the ship. There are two ways to win. One is to vote out the astronaut you suspect to be the alien imposter. Another way to win is to complete all tasks within the ship. At least, that’s how my son explained it. He loves the game so much, he asked me to bake him an Among Us themed cake.
As you all probably know by now, I like baking small cakes. If I could, I would bake larger cakes, and I have been given several suggestions on what to do with the cakes I baked. People have suggested that I donate the cakes to the hospitals, orphanages, etc. I would love to do that, seriously but I don’t have a car or a proper cake transporter to bring it to them. I would have to literally carry the cake on my lap, on a bus. It’s not a great idea. My in-laws are diabetic, so that’s not a good idea either. Which is why, the best thing to do is to bake less often and shrink my cakes.
For this cake, I used the 15 cm 5 tin layer cake pans by Wilton. The pan set came with cake recipes. I followed the Umber/Rainbow Cake recipes, but used Purple Yam flavoring as per my son’s request. I tried making Swiss Merengue Buttercream for the filling and coating, but since it has been a while that I have made them, I kept messing it up. I messed up twice. I think I used the wrong butter. Again. UGH! Having lost 2 hours, I gave up and went for the American Buttercream and added coconut flavors. For the final frosting, I added Dutch Black Cacao to a second batch of American Buttercream.
While baking the cakes, I first prepared the cake board. Using cheap fondant, I rolled a thin layer and placed it on the board. Using my stensil set, I stamped the words, “Happy Birthday” near the edge of the board and colored them in with green powdered food coloring, mixed with 70% alcohol. I wanted it to look a bit more professional, so I covered the side of the cake board with a red ribbon.
Since I need to make 2 astronauts, I set aside one of the cake layers and only stacked up four layers of cake. When all was set up, nice and dandy, I took a small bowl of 70% alcohol and added white powder food coloring. With a paint brush, I flicked white edible paint onto the Black Frosted Cake. And you get a nice, space-like environment.
Next I crumbled the cake I set aside and mushed it together with a bit of the left over buttercream. I rolled 2 balls of one measuring 80g and another, 36g. I molded the 80g cake ball into a full body of the Among Us astronaut. The 36g is only the bottom half. I took out a packet of fondant, colored them with food coloring, rolled them flat before covering the molds. I added details to the astronauts according to the images above before propping them up on top of the cake. I made a nice little party hat for the green astronaut and glued it on its head with edible glue.
I wanted blood on the cake, so I melted down white chocolate au bain marie style, added whole cream and red food coloring. Again, I had to do this 3x! The first two tries were terrible because I forgot which food coloring worked best with chocolates. Pro Gel sure wasn’t it! I stuck with Brand New Cake Food Coloring. To complete the look, I placed white pearls on the bottom and added stars and colored candy balls on the side of the cake. And viola! It’s done!
Sweet t’Haart 