Bake With Me: An ube-flavored Mimikyu cake for #PokeNoms month!

Of all our many Pokémon friends, Mimikyu is tied for my all-time favorite Pokémon. (If you’re wondering, he’s tied with Drifloon. I’m a ghost type kinda girl.) In fact, I recently welcomed a jumbo plush into our home that now lives in our bedroom.

It felt only right to try making my own Mimikyu at some point, and the Fandom Foodies theme for May being #Pokenoms was an excellent excuse. PokeNoms was hosted by the amazing Sarah at The Cupcakedex, so check out her post for it here and see all the amazing stuff she and other Fandom Foodies made this past month! Honestly, if you’re remotely into Pokémon food her whole account is a must follow. I especially love her Instagram.

I wanted to go all out and just make a 3D Mimikyu that I could pretend was living in my garden, so this one’s gonna be a “Bake With Me”: less of a tutorial and more of a process photo series. So, let’s get started!

THE FLAVOR: I chose to make Mimikyu out of ube pound cake and ube Italian meringue buttercream, both because ube sweets are delicious and because I felt the deep purple color really suited our boy. Why pound cake? Well, it’s easiest to carve and it tastes great. Plain and simple.

I used a standard pound cake recipe (though I prefer one with the addition of milk and a little baking powder to lighten things up) and added ube flavoring. In the future I’d like to play around with ube powders and whatnot, but for now this worked really well! The color was beautiful and the taste was excellent.

THE CONSTRUCTION: The entire thing consisted of two 6″ round cakes, one 5″ round cake, one 4″ round cake, and one 6″ half sphere cake.

I decided to build this cake on rearranged parts of a multi-tiered acrylic cake stand. I liked the idea of a clear bottom, and I was able to screw the center poles together without the smaller cake plates between them for a super sturdy central structure to build on. Plus, once I’m done I could wash it and re-use! Win-win-win.

Since the center pole was fairly wide, I had to cut a small round out of each layer. At the top of the neck, I decided to add a small 4″ round cake board supported by bubble tea straws. Pound cake is heavy, and I didn’t want the head to compress the body.

I gave a light crumb coat, chilled the cake, and then inserted two sharpened dowels for the ears. I built them up with white modeling chocolate, covered the ears and whole body in another layer of icing, and tried to smooth it out as much as possible. I found a flexible acetate strip worked best for this, though I also made use of a mini spatula! Back in the fridge it went, this time for a good hour so it’d be chilled through. Before I began fondant covering, I used clean fingers to gently smooth out any ridges.

THE DECORATION: Now the decorating begins! First up: the black spiked edge base, a black segment on the belly for his eyes (which I was careful to smooth flush with the base coat of icing), and the head. I cut out the jagged black base first and applied it as a strip. For the head, I rolled out a piece of fondant and covered the whole front, then pinched it together in the back and trimmed off the excess with scissors. It’s hard to overstate how much easier this process is with good fondant, so invest in a bucket if you’re able!

This method of covering leaves seams in the back (see below). To fill seams, I mix fondant with some water until it forms a smooth, thick paste. I use this paste to fill in the seams, then smooth it gently with a mini spatula or a clean finger I’ve dipped in water. This method doesn’t look flawless, so it’s still a good idea to keep seams toward the back and try to keep them small, but it works surprisingly well to minimize the appearance of them! You can see me beginning this process at the very bottom of the following image.

Next, I covered the body. I did this with a solid piece of fondant, and unlike the black base, I cut the triangle edges out with an exacto knife after the fondant was already on. This made it a lot easier to control the size and spacing. 2 segments of black fondant covered the ear tips, and I used a sculpting tool to make them look folded along with adjusting some folds on his body. I also cut out the eye holes to reveal the black fondant beneath and used some very watered down black color to lightly sketch out where his painted features should go.

The face was painted on with food coloring. I used liquid airbrush color for the cheeks and powdered color mixed with Everclear for the eyes and mouth.

I didn’t allow time for a fondant tail to dry, so I cut a tail out of cake board and covered it in fondant. This method isn’t 100% edible, obviously, but in summer when your fondant wants to absorb humidity it can be a life saver. I did insert some bamboo skewers into the cardboard to keep it sturdy, and I filled in gaps on the side with fondant before covering it. Once it was covered I textured it with a sculpting tool and painted on the black stripes. I attached the tail to the base and leaned it up against the head (where I secured it with a toothpick) so it wouldn’t have to be freestanding.

The very last step was to dry brush some grey powdered food coloring into the folds and ridges on Mimikyu’s ears and neck (or the neck of his costume anyway), the result of which you’ll see in the final photos below!

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