A friend of mine and her daughter are big fans of Loki since watching The Avengers – but for entirely different reasons I expect. Personally, I am more of a Thor girl.

Last month, my friend asked me if I would make her a Loki cake for her daughter’s 9th birthday. To construct this cake, I made a standard Victoria sponge recipe. This was sandwiched with vanilla buttercream, before coating the cake in a crumb layer of buttercream which I allowed to set a little.

I then coated the cake in a layer of fondant. Now, I debated over the colour as I wanted something bright and in contrast to the green and black I would use on the figure. I had some fondant I had coloured orange left over from the Halloween cake, and thought this would work perfectly. It did!

I created a design for Loki that was slightly cartoony (this was for a nine year old after all), but what was hopefully recognisable as the Asgardian god. HERE is a copy of the template for the various pieces if you want to have a go yourself.

I then made some black, green and a little yellow fondant and cut out the various pieces (which was fiddly by the way). After a few failed attempts, I came up with this system. Trace the shapes onto some greaseproof paper. Cut out one colour’s pieces, and then spray the ‘wrong’ side with a little spray oil. This temporarily adheres it to the fondant, but is easy to peel off once your shape is cut out.

Roll out your fondant fairly thin, otherwise your finished design will be quite thick. I recommend using some rolling pin spaces to get a thin and even thickness.

Cut around the template with a sharp knife, and leave to one side paper side down (so that it doesn’t stick to the surface). Repeat this process for your other colours until you have all your pieces ready

Once all your shapes are cut out, begin to layer them on to the cake. I dipped my finger into a bowl of water to just moisten the back of each piece to make it just a little tacky which was enough to hold it in place.I piped a bithday message onto the cake board, as once the character was in place, there wasn’t enough room left on the cake.

The final piece, the bit that is quintessentially Loki, is the horns. Loki wears a helmet with two large curved horns, and I made these by mixing a little CMC into some yellow fondant, and forming it into horns. The CMC causes the fondant to dry harder than it would normally, and while entirely edible, it doesn’t taste nice, so the horns would be for decoration only. Once the horns are formed, insert a toothpick into the base of each horn leaving about half of the pick sticking out. Leave these off the cake to dry out, and only place into the cake just before you present the cake as they will dry brittle and be fragile.

Victoria Sponge

Print recipe

Ingredients

• 4 Eggs (large)
• 225g Self-Raising Flour
• 225g Caster Sugar
• 225g Unsalted Butter
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Directions

1.	Cream together the butter and sugar until light, fluffy and pale.
2.	Beat the eggs with the vanilla extract and add to the mixture a little at a time
3.	Sift the flour and baking powder together then gently fold into the mixture
4.	Separate the mixture into 2 greased and lined sandwiched tins
5.	Bake each layer at 180°C / 350°F / Gas 4 for 20-25 mins until the top is lightly golden, or a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean
6.	Once cooled, sandwich with jam and dust with icing sugar