This Minecraft-themed cake is very simple.

It’s just a firm chocolate sponge with cubes cut out to make the excavated area, green butter icing for grass, and jelly gems embedded in the “earth”. Water and lava made from blue and orange ready roll icing, both blended with a little white to give it a flowing effect. The water and lava were coated in a jelly glaze. TNT is chocolate brownie in orange icing decorated with black writing icing.

Stick on a Papercraft Minecraft character (Google will find lots of these if you search for “minecraft papercraft”) as a finishing touch.

My son is a big Skylander’s fan so I thought a Portal of Power cake would be great for his 9th birthday.

This is actually a very easy cake to make with ready-to-roll icing. I cheated and bought a white ready-iced round cake for the base. There are a couple of layers of icing to go, so if you want to reduce the sugar in this strip off the icing from the sides leaving just the top iced in white. My kids love icing, so I just left it on!

Once you’ve got the white base, blend some black and white ready roll to make grey. Put a strip around the base of the white-iced cake.

Add a second strip about an inch from the base and folded over so it is slightly extending into the centre. Pinch the edge of this to make it look like a straight-edged stone wall. Straighten the bottom edge of the upper layer with the blunt edge of a knife, pressing rather than cutting.

Add eight evenly spaced 1 inch wide strips of icing vertically from the base and slightly extending into the centre. Again, pinch the edge to square it off.

Press some scrunched-up grease proof paper into the icing to give a stone effect. Use a sharp knife to score lines giving the brick effect.

There are hieroglyphics on the portal, so cut out the shapes with a sharp knife and fill them with white icing (I just used the ready roll stuff).

Finish off with a bright green, thin ribbon around the base and Skylanders game characters on the top.