I write letters to Ellen DeGeneres. No particular reason. Just because I can.

Dear Ellen,

Last weekend, my baby boy.

Turned seven-years-old. I’m sure it will come to no surprise when I tell you that his life revolves around Legos.

I’m not going to lie. The thought of trying to make a Lego cake was terrifying. Then again, it’s just a rectangle and a couple of squares. How hard could that be?

Fortunately there’s YouTube. And on YouTube there are hundreds of videos on how to make a Lego cake. I chose one that looked easy. And it was, except that the woman in the video left out a few details that would’ve been really helpful.

As I’m writing this, I’m remembering a scene from Julie/Julia where novice cook, Julie Powell, is trying to cook her way through Julia Child’s cookbook. She’s on the aspic section of the book, trying to make one. If you recall from the movie, an aspic was a disgusting beef-jello-mold-thing. I couldn’t find the clip from the movie where Julie spilled the aspic on the floor, but I think the completed aspic would’ve look something like this:

As she’s cleaning the spilled aspic up off the floor, she’s talking about how Julia Child told everyone in the cookbook that making aspics was easy. Julie’s comment regarding that: “All I can say is, the bitch lied.”

That is the exact sentiment I had when I was watching this video on how to make a Lego cake.

Underneath the video’s description she states exactly what you need to make this cake, including the size of the cake pan which is listed as 9x13x2 inches. As fate would have it, I had a cake pan that size. Following her instructions, I baked the cake. 

This was around 9 pm the night before the party. I waited this late on purpose so I could bake and decorate the cake without being constantly interrupted. I let the cake cool, flipped it onto a cutting board, cut it in thirds and then looked at it. The pieces were too short. They were only half the height of the pieces she had in the video.

I watched the video again. That’s when I realized. She wasn’t using a 2-inch deep baking dish. She was probably using a 4-inch deep baking dish. Which meant she also probably doubled her cake mix.

Baking a second cake wasn’t a problem. When it comes to screwing up a rectangle, I’m talented. I bought extra cake mix just in case. The problem was, I didn’t have enough icing because I used a lot more than I thought I was going to. So, on the morning of my son’s birthday — when I should’ve been cleaning cheerios and lint out of the furniture, wiping down mysterious sticky spots off of every surface of the house, and setting up for the party — I went to Walmart and bought more icing.

Icing a cake, as it turns out, isn’t that easy. It’s also messy. I had a rainbow of smudges all over my countertop by the time I was done. The cakes didn’t turn out the way I envisioned them. Such is life. But they were edible. 

I scattered chocolate Legos around the cake board to try to hide the messy icing. And then for fun, I put some chocolate Lego people on top of the blue Lego cake because that was the cake my son asked for. Not pictured is a small, pink Lego brick that was in the fridge.

Aside from the stress of the cake, everyone had a great time. We rented a bounce house for the kids to play in.

And my son was gifted a few more Lego sets to add to his collection. 

Most importantly, the birthday boy had a fantastic day. The day after the party, we returned the bounce house. That completely ruined his life.

A. Marie

P.S.

The video recipe calls for food coloring to add to white icing. I skipped that step and just bought colored icing. They sell it at Walmart in the craft section of the store.

Thanks for shopping Snark, Sass, & Sarcasm! I’ll see you next time.