The Rubik Cake
About this build
Three square sponge layers filled with apricot jam are offset and decorated with black icing and coloured squares to resemble a Rubik's Cube.
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- The sponge was 9 eggs with 18 oz each of butter, self-raising flour and caster sugar, made by the usual Victoria sponge method in one tin as three layers of 120 by 38 mm, each layer taking about an hour including mixing, baking and cooling; no oven temperature or time is given separately. The layers were trimmed square against a paper template and to the height of an icing-sugar box, filled with apricot jam and offset to look mid-turn. Black colouring only turned the icing grey, so the grey covering was painted with black colouring afterwards, and the coloured tiles were cut as 35 mm squares. Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4 · Source 5 · Source 6 · Source 7
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Ingredients: 9 eggs 18oz butter 18oz self raising flour 18oz caster sugar 1 jar apricot jam 2 boxes of royal icing 1 black liquid coloring 1 red liquid coloring 1 blue liquid coloring 1 yellow liquid coloring Box of icing sugar
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I only had one tin which was suitable. I decided that I needed three layers, each being 120mm by 38mm to form my cube. The extra 6mm came in the form of two 3mm fillings. I made the cake mixture using the normal Victoria sponge method. Of course each layer took an hour, with mixing cooking and cooling.
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The original account
Introduction
I am a fan of the Rubik cube. I first got a cube as a 12 year old in England back in 1980 and have been hooked ever since. At my local pub there was a competition for the gentlemen who were regulars to bake a cake. The prize would be awarded on presentation, creativity and taste.
It was my wife’s idea to combine my love of the cube with cake making and so was born – The Rubik Cake.
I decided on a simple Victoria sponge cake covered with coloured icing sugar.
Ingredients:
9 eggs
18oz butter
18oz self raising flour
18oz caster sugar
1 jar apricot jam
2 boxes of royal icing
1 black liquid coloring
1 red liquid coloring
1 blue liquid coloring
1 yellow liquid coloring
Box of icing sugar
Total cost: £11.94
I only had one tin which was suitable. I decided that I needed three layers, each being 120mm by 38mm to form my cube. The extra 6mm came in the form of two 3mm fillings. I made the cake mixture using the normal Victoria sponge method. Of course each layer took an hour, with mixing cooking and cooling.
After 3 hours I had 3 layers suitable for my cube layers.
This was a tricky bit. I had to make sure that each layer was perfectly square. I made a template with a piece of paper and cut the edges off.
Next was the height. This was going to be hard. For the perfect cube look I needed the three pieces to be exactly the same. Luckily the icing sugar box was 38mm high so I used that as a guide.
Three matching pieces.
I wanted the cube to be displayed "in action". So I rotated the middle piece through 45 degrees and the top piece another 45 degrees. I used the apricot jam as a filling to add taste and help them to stick together. Perfect.
Next, the hardest part. I mixed the black liquid food colouring with some of the icing but it just turned grey. I really wanted a black covering, so I covered the whole cube in my grey icing. This turned out to be a bit of a patchwork job, cutting little pieces and sticking them on with melted apricot jam. I then used water to "weld" all the edges together. This whole process took about 2 hours. Once I had done that, I "painted" black colouring directly onto it and it produced a lovely blak finish. I then left it to dry as I did not want it to stain my tiles.
The tiles. I divided the remaining icing into 6 lumps and coloured them.
White – the icing was white already.
Blue, Yellow, Red and Blue were straightforward. Just add colouring and knead in. Keep adding and kneeding until the desired colour is achieved. Orange was a little tricky and involved a combination of red and yellow. Green was blue and yellow.
I then rolled each one out and cut into 35mm cubes.
Now for applying the tiles. I got my cube and randomly scrambled it. I wanted it to be an authentic scramble. Each tile was easy to stick on with water.
More tile application.
Once all the tiles were in place I brushed over the whole cube with water to clean up the icing sugar that was used to roll the icing.
Note real cube next to it.
Once dried, it produced a lovely matt finish.
I won the competition beating 11 other cakes. At the end they were all auctioned off for charity and someone bought mine for £20 ($40) and then shared out to everyone in the pub, everyone got a minicube.
