Pikachu Shaped Cake

Our oldest turned 7 this weekend!  It seems like he was born yesterday – but alas, it’s been a long time, ha.  This year he requested a Pikachu cake, in a lemon flavour (his favourite).  Rather than do a plain yellow cake with a decorated face and ears (similar to this unicorn cake), I thought I would try my hand at a Pikachu shaped cake instead!  That’s right, I wanted to form a cute little Pikachu made out of cake, and I’m sharing how I did it :)

Before we get to the cake forming, I will mention that I did not make a new recipe for this cake.  I’ve never done a lemon cake before, so used this gluten-free vegan lemon cake recipe from Caked by Katie.  I follow her on Instagram and she posted the recipe there a few weeks ago, perfect timing!  (Although I didn’t make my version completely vegan/gluten free – and I did a normal lemon buttercream instead).

For the shape of the cake, I used a few Pikachu photos as reference.  We had a Pikachu book with mostly his back shown on the cover, so I went online to check out other views.  Here is a similar Pikachu-shaped cake I was looking at, and this is the Pikachu pose/photo I was using as direct inspiration.  Essentially, a sitting Pikachu with mouth-closed.

Building a Pikachu-Shaped Cake

First thing was making the cake layers!  I should have doubled the recipe and/or made a smaller Pikachu, but you live and you learn.  My first two layers sunk in a bit, but it was the perfect spot to add the lemon curd.

Once it was all stacked (I used 3 x 6″ cake layers), I started making a rounded top for Pikachu’s shoulders.  I was hoping to use all the off-cuts to make the head, but I needed a lot more cake.  (And thankfully have plenty of leftover cake layers in the freezer, ha).

Essentially, I took all the leftover lemon cake and a red layer of my rainbow cake to form a ball-shaped head.  You mix it with the frosting and it’s like a big cake ball.  It’s a big heavier than the normal cake layers, so I secured it with some wood kebab skewers.  From there I lightly crumb coated the whole Pikachu, and put it in the freezer to set.

After, I mixed some more cake crumbs/icing to form the arms and feet of Pikachu.  The arms were squished on, but I added a small toothpick in the feet to hold them in place.  Ideally, these would have been lemon cake too, but I don’t know if people complained too much about the different flavours…

I also added a thin layer of icing to that, and back in the freezer it went to set.  (OH, and had it been lemon, you wouldn’t have seen the red underneath as much).

Decorating a Pikachu Shaped Cake

While that was setting, I got out some melting wafers and tried to make a yellow to match my lemon buttercream.

I didn’t think I’d have enough yellow, so did a combo of yellow, white, orange and even a green one thrown in.  The colour wasn’t as vibrant as the frosting, but still a good yellow.

I traced the shapes of the ears and tail on a piece of paper.  Then, put a clear sheet of acetate overtop and smeared my chocolate on.  Finally, I melted chocolate and added the brown details.

I realized that I should have put dowels in the chocolate to stick the shapes on the cake, but added them afterwards.

Oh, and it would have been better to do the brown first, then the yellow.  That way, the colours would have been on the smooth side…

From there, I hand-piped some fuzzy yellow frosting all. over. Pikachu.  My hand cramped up, and this took a lot of time, ha.  It’s also called a “grass” tip, if you’re looking for something similar.  I left some open patches on his back for the brown sections, and some pink circles for his cheeks.

For the eyes, I wanted to do a white chocolate wafer coloured with black edible marker, but it wasn’t working.  So, I just put the black icing on the white wafer and stuck it on his face.  It’s not the exact same shape as Pikachu’s (which should be more oval), but it worked.  Haha Zachary also mentioned that Pikachu doesn’t have a star-shaped nose, but I don’t have that many icing tips.

(He also tried telling me that Pikachu didn’t have a nose, but that was not true).

Anyways, the Pikachu-shaped cake was pretty much a success!  No, it’s not an exact replica of Pikachu, because the cake head is a bit more round, and the face is definitely off, but it still looks like Pikachu.

Lol, actually the shape of the cake kind of looks like Garfield from the back, very rotund, ha.  Félix mentioned he wanted a Charizard cake for his birthday, but you best believe I am not making a shaped Charizard cake!

I am happy that I was able to get such a good formed cake that didn’t collapse.  (Cake weight logistics is always a concern, ha), and may try different shaped cakes in the future.  Not Charizard though, definitely not Charizard…

Oh, on an unrelated note, I also took out all the “pre-used” candles I had and stuck them on the cake.  Then, realized I only had five, and had to add two more after, ha.

Zachary liked his Pikachu cake, and although he doubted me during the construction, he did say it turned out well!

Hopefully you enjoyed reading about this Pikachu-shaped cake!  Let me know if you’ve ever attempted a shaped cake, and/or a Pikachu cake in general.  Oh, and the kids were not into Pokémon when we did our Halloween costumes a few years ago, but they definitely like it now!

Similar Posts:

• Rainbow Unicorn Cake
• Worms & Dirt Cake
• Family Pokémon Character Costumes