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The Rubik Cake

by James Kemp 14 photos Rated 92% 1,349 votes when voting closed

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.

Self-raising flour, sugar, blocks of butter, a jar of jam and a box of eggs on the worktop

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

A huge bowl of creamed cake batter beside an electric hand mixer, sieve and bowl of flour

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.

Three square sponges, two cooling on a wire rack and one still in its lined tin

After 3 hours I had 3 layers suitable for my cube layers.

A sponge trimmed square on a wooden board, its cut-off edges and a serrated knife alongside

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.

A trimmed sponge block beside two boxes of ready-to-roll icing, a hand reaching in

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.

Four square sponge slabs cooling on a wire rack, all trimmed to matching size

Three matching pieces.

Sponge layers stacked and offset on a foil board to mimic a half-turned cube

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.

The stacked layers coated in glossy near-black icing, still twisted out of line

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.

Nine white icing squares cut out on a floury worktop beside a rolling pin and ruler

The tiles. I divided the remaining icing into 6 lumps and coloured them.
White – the icing was white already.

Red, green and blue icing squares laid out to dry on a wooden board

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.

Coloured icing squares being pressed onto the top face of the black-iced cake

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.

Squares filling in across the top and one side, the bottom tier still bare black

More tile application.

The finished cake cube beside a real Rubik's Cube, many times smaller, for scale

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.

The finished cake, top layer twisted out of line like a cube caught mid-solve

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.

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