This alphabet blocks cake provided my first experience with using royal icing to cover a cake. It took 10 hours from the time I started preparing the cake until I put the last little worm on it. It took A LOT of effort, but I really wanted to bake something special for my daughter Aliya’s first birthday.
I got the alphabet blocks idea from Pinterest, and put my own spin on it.
I spent 3 weeks preparing the decorations (worms, flowers, letters and butterflies) because they kept disappearing. (I’m assuming they made their way into my daughter’s tummy.)
How to Make This Alphabet Block Cake
- Bake a large square vanilla cake.
- Cut it into squares and freeze. Otherwise, it is impossible to get the icing on without breaking it. (I learned that lesson the hard way.)
- Cover the squares in delicious butter icing. (My family and friends really love my icing recipe, not too sweet and very creamy.)
- Roll out your royal icing and wrap each square. This was both the most difficult and funny part. My first few squares came out as a complete disaster. I couldn’t even try to fix them because my brother kept eating them. Apparently they were too good to waste.
- Pipe pink icing sugar along the sides of your squares. It also helps to cover up an oops here and there.
- Stick your letters on each side of the square with sugar water. I spelled my daughters’ name with the squares so that you could see her name from every angle.
- Now stack the blocks like a pyramid and stick the little flowers, butterflies, and worms on it.
- Voila! It’s 4:00am and you’ve got a stunning alphabet blocks cake, but way too little sleep to cope with the birthday party in the morning.
Everyone liked my cake. Even my friend who is a professional baker thought it was great. It was not just pretty, but YUMMY too.
It was worth all the effort to see my daughter’s huge smile when she saw it, and even better to hear her cute giggle when she could finally have that butterfly she wanted all day. :)
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