Superhero Cake Tutorial

I bring you my superhero cake tutorial today. Cakes have become a really fun hobby for me. It’s one of those hobbies you know you love because you can become so focused that you forget to eat. Very little takes away my attention from remembering to eat. I have found ways to get my kids involved in helping me with a lot of my cake pursuits, but this particular cake I really had to do on my own while they were sleeping. Although this cake wasn’t overly demanding in skill, it took the kind of work that the kids really just couldn’t help me with. This is actually a fairly simple cake to make in terms of fondant cakes. I want to give you two links from previous post that can really help you learn the basic skills to make this cake happen for the superhero in your own life. The first post is called “Cake Making 101” and the second is “Cake Making 201.” These both create the foundation for creating really awesome cakes. Some of my favorite cake recipes include: White Velvet Cake, Perfect Chocolate Cake, Pound Cake, Red Velvet, Subtle Coconut Cake, My Favorite Buttercream, Eggnog Buttercream and Oreo Buttercream. I like to use Duff brand fondant. For this cake, I used his fondant that comes pre-colored. It gives nice bold colors with no mixing, which can add too much air into fondant and make it more challenging to work with. I’ve had to try and mix black fondant before, and it is virtually impossible. One trick is to take chocolate fondant and mix in the black. You can get there that way. However, now that Duff sells black, it’s all I use.

For the bottom Spiderman tier, I created guidelines with the edge of a long knife. I eye-balled it by gently laying (you don’t want to pierce the fondant) knife down and marking it like you would cut a pizza. However, to be more exact you could figure out the circumference and divide the cake edge into 12 sections You could use a string to determine the length between two of the lines and run it around the other edge of the cake, marking the spots with a toothpick. You would then connect the dots across from each other. Once I did the lines across the cake, I also created lines straight down the edge of the cake from each spot along the edge. This provided the guidelines for going down the vertical edge of the cake.

I used a royal icing recipe from Wilton. Note that royal ice dries very hard, doesn’t taste very good and should be kept, covered with a damp cloth, in a glass bowl. I just put mine straight into a piping bag to keep it from drying out. I am not great at piping work because I work mostly with fondant. It does take a bit of practice, so I would practice on the side. One thing to keep in mind while piping is to keep a steady stream coming from the bag. You will want to squeeze consistently so your lines don’t break or become too thick. Another thing is that you want to touch the icing to the cake but then create the line of icing by keeping your tip moving ABOVE the cake until you are ready to touch down again at the end of your line The great thing about royal icing is that it is fairly easy to remove from fondant if you mess up. The black does make that a little more challenging if you mess up big time, but it is still possible to remove. I had to do this a few times. The arched web connections I eye-balled as well. I probably should have measured up each line to create a bit more consistency in design. I’d recommend doing that. I would say piping, for me, was the most challenging part of this cake. Again, I don’t do it very often and need to practice a lot more. It really is an art.

I used a product I had never used before to create the spiderman spider. These edible sugar sheets are made by Wilton. They are like cutting out stock paper, but they are edible. Pretty amazing. I printed out the logo, placed it on top of a piece of the black sugar sheets, which I had trimmed to size.

I used an Exacto life to cut out the spider by cutting through the paper and then through the edible sheet. It was really fairly easy, and the spider isn’t as delicate as I would image, but creates a delicate, intricate look. I was able to attached this to the side of my cake using a little bit of my black royal icing.

A little tip I learned while covering this cake in black fondant is that to remove the white powder left over on the fondant by cornstarch or powdered sugar, you can add a little bit of Crisco with a paper towel to the fondant. Do this gently so to not puncture or dent the fondant. The Crisco will absorb into the fondant but leave a nice, shiny look.

The logos were fairly easy to create. All I did was print out the logo to the size I wanted. I rolled out fondant of the appropriate color and used my Exacto knife to cut through the paper and the fondant at the same time.

I did the same with the superman logo. I traced around a yellow piece and used my intricate, cut out red piece to go on top. You could use the sugar sheets I mentioned for this kind of detail work also.

I use drinking straws (smoothie size if possible) to create the structure between my tiers instead of dowels. For a cake this size, you will need internal structure to create stability.

There you have a fabulous superhero cake for your next party. I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions.

For More Posts on our Superhero Party:

Superhero Party Invitations

Superhero Party Food

Superhero Party Ideas