Baby blocks made of cake

I hate making baby building blocks. I make mine out of fondant and can spend far too long squaring each block up and smoothing the sides so they look perfect.

I bought a mould a while ago, which is a block of squares. I’ve not tried this out yet but one idea is to make them out of melted chocolate in this mould, and then cover the block with fondant. Alternatively (and again I’ve not tried it yet) fill the mould with fondant and pop it in the freezer so when the fondant is released it doesn’t go out of shape.

Good luck and hope the above may be of some help to you x

Thank you!!! However, client wants the blocks to be made of cake, which would make it more difficult. I was thinking of using a pound cake, covering the blocks with ganache and then fondant – maybe that will work!

Your idea is a good one. Imagine you are doing individual square cakes. However you would do those is how you would approach the blocks. I’d definitely use pound cake, then layer the cake. Put in the freezer to firm up nicely before trimming them to the perfect square shape. My guess is that this will be the hardest process.

You can definitely ganache them. Because they are small you could try pouring the ganache over like you would on a petit four. I would do fondant panels on each side so that the shape stays nice and crisp.

Yes, very time consuming. Anything that small is always time consuming. Most places here are anywhere between $10-20 each for mini cakes depending on how much detail you put on them.

Thank you, Onetier… I’m hoping the client will decide to just make the blocks as decorations so I can make them out of fondant/gumpaste… Keeping my fingers crossed! LOL!!!

I did a baby block cake last year, although the blocks were bigger (5″×5″). I baked the cake in a sheet pan, then cut the size of squares I wanted. I did vanilla cake with custard and berries and carrot cake filled with cream cheese. Refrigerate so everything firms up, then trimmed my cakes to make nice even sides. I always use a cake board under the cake— the board cut to the same size as my cake as a guide. Mine were just frosted with buttercream and then I added fondant details. They are not perfect squares, but when you stand back and look at them, it’s hard to tell.

I think icing with a thick ganache would give crisp corners/edges if you wanted to just cover the whole square in fondant.

Squares are labor intensive and always take me more time than a round cake. I think $10 each is not unreasonable. How many do you have to make?

After all the research I did, the client never got back to me about the order – I unsuccessfully tried to contact her and never got a response back. I can’t understand why people are so thoughtless. All she had to do was say that she had changed her mind – oh, well – I suppose that’s part of the business.