Baking, board games…the introvert has many hobbies, the aforementioned of which can be nicely combined! As fancy and professional as they may look, plenty of the chess or even scrabble-inspired cakes you may have stumbled across online are in fact fully possible to create with basic equipment – and in your own kitchen! Below you’ll find some inspiration and tips for turning classic tabletops into delicious desserts.
Chess Cake
An ambitious baking endeavor, and one of the most popular board-game- turned-cake themes. If you happen to have a square baking tin, chocolate molds and a lot of patience then the chess cake is a sweet way to impress your nerdiest friends.
Go with a classic cake base flavor of your choosing. To support the chessboard structure and game pieces, you might want a cake base with a heavier texture – as opposed to fluffy or spongy cake consistency. You can make your cake a little denser by using less baking powder, switching cake flour for normal flour, using a hand wisp instead of electric, and incorporating ingredients like butter or banana.
Once you have your cake base, create the checkered board out of either icing blocks or chocolate slabs. The cake sides are best decorated with frosting. As for the chess pieces – you can craft your own using icing or chocolate molds, or take the forgivably simpler route of buying ready-made chocolate chess pieces online. Finally, you are ready to challenge your opponent…eat your way to checkmate one piece at a time.
Poker Cake
Whether you’re hosting an old school poker night, or you’re celebrating your lucky friend’s birthday – a poker cake is full of character and fantastically fun to decorate. The oval or hexagonal card table shape is not easy to replicate without a special cake tin, but baking two same-sized square cakes will allow you to merge them into something of the sort. Green sheets of icing will work nicely as felt.
Final decorative pieces like chips and cards will depend on the variant of poker portrayed, and the hands you want to be depicted. Royal Flush with the heart suits is the highest hand in most poker games (see below), but if you’re short on icing or patience, simply add the best possible pocket cards in poker – two Aces!
Scrabble Cake
A great way to get your celebratory message across – literally. Making a Scrabble cake is even more difficult than a chess cake in terms of board design (icing ‘Triple Letter Score’ inside tiny squares is nobody’s idea of fun). Luckily, you can get a ready-made Scrabble board made of icing (along with chocolate playing tiles) online – that deals with half the trouble pretty nicely. Simply make sure that the measurements align with your square cake, then decorate the sides with icing. Cake bases are very optional for this one – though the denser, the better, as you want the board to stay intact when slicing into it.
Scrabble is one of the most popular family games in the world, and now you can enjoy it in more ways than one!
Monopoly Cake
The perfect theme for when your loved one gets promoted or secures that new job they’d been hoping for. Celebrate a time of prosperity with the iconic Monopoly Man; a universally recognized symbol of wealth and affluence.
The first edition of Monopoly was designed by economist Elizabeth Magie, who hoped the board game would help demonstrate how easily capitalism leads to evil and corruption…but don’t let that get you down!
The classic playing pieces can be made out of marzipan or icing (use colored mist spray to replicate their silvery shade), and maybe even play around with some red or green food coloring for the cake base beneath all that monetary decorativeness. Laugh at the proletariat as you indulge in this monopolizing cake!
Candyland Cake
A conveniently candylicious choice for those looking to turn their favorite board game into a delicious cake. Candyland is a Hasbro classic and especially popular with younger kids because of its simple rules and straight-forward racing agenda.
Though first released in 1949, the game still sells an impressive 1 million copies each year. Most distinct about the board game is its colorful and sugar- sweet illustrations of a magical candy-filled forest world. Though the game’s board design has developed over the years and varied with each edition; candy canes, lollipops, gingerbread, chocolate, marshmallows, and gumdrops are invariably featured.
The characters themselves are personifications of classic sweet treats – Lord Licorice and Frostina, for example. The game’s sugary theme makes it the perfect inspiration for a child’s birthday cake, with lots of opportunities to be creative.
