Emoji Cake Tutorial

These cakes are great fun to make and they are so easy to personalise!! My daughter and I had great fun deciding what emoji faces to choose for her birthday cake this year. She finally settled on the Tears of Joy and Blowing a Kiss emoji cakes! 

The inside of the cake has a little surprise too because it is a vanilla and chocolate Zebra cake, which was delicious and a lot of fun to make. 

The Zebra cakes were a lot of fun to make and it tasted really good too, but if you prefer a plain sponge cake then this recipe will be enough to make both of these cakes. Bake at 190º C/375ºF/ Gas Mark 5 until a skewer comes out clean and then allow to cool completely before you add the the buttercream and decorate.

Serves 8-10 

To make:

2 x 6 inch Cake tins

1 x Qty Simple Vanilla Buttercream Recipe 

Pallet knife

Sharp kitchen knife

Rolling pin

Yellow Food colouring

Icing sugar for dusting 

400-500g Yellow ready to roll icing

100g Black ready to roll icing

Small amounts of White, Red and Pale Blue ready to roll icing

Boiled and cooled water or Edible Glue

Small brush

2 x Cake boards 

I followed Home Cooking Adventure's Recipe for her beautiful Chocolate and Vanilla Zebra cake recipe, here is her list of ingredients in both American Cup measurements and in Grams. Follow her instructions on the youtube video below. 

Ingredients: 

4 eggs
1 cup (200g) sugar
1 cup butter (200 g), at room temperature
1 cup (240 ml) milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups (375g) flour
2 tsp (10 g) baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
For the chocolate batter
3 tbsp (25g) cocoa powder
1/4 cup (50ml) milk
1 tbsp (15g) sugar

Method: 

This tutorial will show you how to make your cake batter and how to create the Zebra design.

I split the Zebra cake batter between two 6 inch cake tins and baked side by side in the centre of a preheated (190º C/ 375ºF/ Gas Mark 5) oven for 45-50 minutes (until a skewer cake out clean). I allowed both cakes to cool for 20 minutes before I turned them out on to wire racks to cool completely. 

Once cooled I leveled off both cakes -cut off the domed tops, then I made one quantity of my Simple Vanilla Buttercream Recipe to which I added yellow food colouring. I usually add the full 4tbsp of milk to my buttercream recipe when I am crumb coating a cake, it just is that bit softer and it makes the job a lot easier. The tutorial for my Little Miss Sunshine Cake shows step by step how I covered both cakes with the buttercream and the bright yellow ready to roll icing. 

Once both cakes were covered in the yellow icing I cut out the details for the Emoji faces.

 I cut the mouth, eyes and tears free hand using a sharp kitchen knife.

The pale blue tears can be cut out free hand like I did or if you have a Heart shaped cookie cutter, cut out the heart shape in the icing then cut it right down the centre and that will make two perfect tear shapes - very handy tip for making flower petals too!

Once I was completely happy with the position of all the emojis features, I glued them into place with a small dab of boiled and cooled water (or edible glue if you have it). Gently brush the excess icing sugar off the cake when everything is set in place and your done!

The second cake was made in exactly the same way, I cut all the main features out of black ready to roll icing, positioned them using a emoji picture on my phone and then cut the heart out of a small piece of red sugarpaste. Once I was happy with the face I glued everything into place with a small dab of boiled and cooled water, brushing off the excess icing sugar when everything had set in place.

The Zebra cake is really delicious, I did split the first cake and add a layer of buttercream to it but it didn't need it, it was already soft and moorish already!! I will be definitely be making Home Cooking Adventure Zebra cake again.