Make a Rock Band Drum Set Cake

So, you have a friend or relative with a birthday coming up who is a Be an Expert Rock Band Drum Player, and you want to give them a cake they will never forget? With a bit of careful planning and a fair bit of patience, you can turn a few boxes of cake mix into an edible replica of the Rock Band drum set, complete with a bass pedal!

Ingredients

  • 3 boxes of cake mix, any flavor you like
  • Ingredients called for by the cake mixes, e.g. eggs, oil; quantities will vary
  • Vanilla frosting
  • Chocolate frosting
  • Food coloring
  • Graham crackers
  • A few chocolate bars
  • One bag of M&Ms

Steps

  1. Plan the cake. It really helps if you have a drum set. It doesn't matter if it's for Rock Band or Rock Band 2; for what counts, they're as good as the same.
    • Take a piece of cardboard the width of your drum set and two and a half times the depth of it and fold it about 45% over 55%, and then fold up the remainder. Tape it so you have an inclining stand.
    • While looking at your Rock Band drum set, or a good picture of one, consider where the yellow and blue cakes are going to be. These are the two inner cakes. There should be a gap if you are going to do the controller part, which this guide will cover.
    • Trace the four 9" pans on the cardboard. It doesn't have to be perfect or centered, you just want to get a good idea where things will go.
  2. Bake the four 9" cakes, two at a time. One boxed mix will make two, so you can have two drum pads be one flavor and the other two be another, or they can all be the same.
    • When the second two 9" cakes are baking, have the first two cooling on a wire cooling rack in the fridge. These two will be frosted first.
  3. Bake the 13x9" cake. This cake will make up the controller part in the middle and part of the foot pedal, but most will be scrap (snacks, hey...).
  4. Dye the frosting.
    • This article's original author's wife uses Wilton brand frosting dyes from a cake decorating kit, which she highly recommends to aspiring cake decorators, but while you may be able to wing it with regular food coloring, good luck finding black, which did come with the kit. You will need black for much of this project, so a kit would be a good idea. And it has other things which will make your task much easier.
    • Divide the vanilla frosting into four bowls after setting aside a smaller portion. Use increasing amounts of dye until you find the depth of color which matches the pads on your drum set. The drum pads are, from left to right: Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green. The fifth, smaller portion is orange; this is used on the bass pedal.
    • Dye the chocolate frosting black. It will take a lot of the black dye to darken the chocolate frosting. It may help to get the deepest, darkest chocolate frosting you can find to start with. But the drum pads and controller base are black, not brown like chocolate.
  5. Cut the 13x9" cake for the controller part. Start at one end and hold one of the 9" cakes over one corner, and carefully cut along the edge of the round cake. Now hold the same cake over the other side of what's becoming the controller part, and cut that side as well. When you set this piece between two of the round cakes, it will clearly form the middle piece.
    • There are actually smaller such pieces connecting Red and Yellow, as well as Blue and Green, but you can overlook these minor details. Forgetting the controller, however, would be wrong.
  6. Frost the four 9" cakes with the black chocolate frosting. Return them to the fridge when they are frosted.
  7. Frost the controller/midsection cutaway with the black chocolate frosting.
  8. Cover the top surface, at least, of your cardboard stand with aluminum foil. Don't worry about the guide you traced; you should have a good idea now about how things will go.
  9. Frost the four 9" cakes with the colored frosting.
    • This article's original author's wife used a #12 tip from the cake decorating kit with disposable frosting bags, and then a butter knife to flatten the rings around each pad.
    • You should now have four cakes, each with a colored ring around the top: One red, one yellow, one blue, and one green, henceforth to be called the red cake, yellow cake, and so on.
  10. Place the controller part, now frosted, in the very center of the stand. Place the yellow cake on the left and the blue cake on the right, the edges of the cake touching the controller part. Now place the red cake to the left of and just forward of the yellow cake, and the green cake to the right of and just forward of the blue cake, as they are on the actual drum set.
  11. Detail. These directions are for the Xbox 360 version. Other editors who have Rock Band for the PlayStation and Wii platforms will have to elaborate on how to make the cake look more like those versions of the controller. Even if your drummer does not have an Xbox 360, they will probably appreciate the cake regardless.
    #*At the top of the controller part, in the dead center, is the Xbox "Guide" button. This pulls up the system menu. Place a green M&M face down. If you have a small tool and a lot of patience, you can paint four triangles on the back with some white vanilla frosting to make it more authentic, but this isn't necessary.
    • On either side of the Guide button are two system buttons called Back and Start. Shove two brown M&Ms into the cake side first so only half is sticking out.
    • Below the Guide button and to the left is a standard directional pad. Do like you did for the Back and Start buttons, but with four brown M&Ms, and put them in a cross formation. (Actually the D-pad is grey; if you can get silver M&Ms they will work better for this.)
    • Below the Guide button and to the right are four action buttons, and they're the same color as the pads. (Little known fact: You can push these buttons instead of hitting the pads to play, but it's a lot harder!) The four buttons make a cross, just like the D-pad. Yellow is on top, blue is on the left, red is on the right, and green is at the bottom. These four should be face down as well. If you can get edible writing on them, you can add Y on yellow, X on blue, B on red, and A on green, if you like.
    • Finally, take an orange M&M and jam it in the back of the controller part. This is where the bass pedal's cord plugs in; you'll see on the real drum set the plug is orange.
  12. Make the bass pedal. Trace the actual bass pedal's base onto a piece of paper and cut it out; also trace the pedal itself; cut that out.
    • Place the base template over the remaining cake and cut around, and then carefully cut the top half off, so the bass pedal cake base is about half an inch thick. Frost this and refrigerate for now.
    • Break apart the chocolate bars and melt them in a double boiler. A microwave can also be used in a pinch.
    • Arrange graham crackers on the pedal template, then cleverly break additional graham crackers to fill in the remaining shapes to add up to a graham cracker pedal.
    • Carefully transfer graham cracker pedal to wax paper, coat pieces with melted chocolate. Let solidify; turn and coat reverse side.
    • Additionally coat a piece of graham cracker (a half of a half) in chocolate; this will be used as the support.
    • Furthermore, if you want the bass pedal to appear broken (as the actual bass pedals commonly break) coat additional pieces in chocolate and arrange at the base. Insert the prop where, on the original pedal, the post is, and prop the chocolate graham cracker pedal up on the prop.
    • Frost the pedal with a strip of orange-dyed frosting about a third of the way from the top going the width of the pedal, just like the real one.
    • The pedal should remain frozen until the cake is ready to be presented.
  13. Present the cake to the recipient. Two paper towel rolls, cut in half, can be used to elevate the stand, but do make sure they are even.

Tips

  • Consider accessorizing the cake. If you can find them, the long Cow Tails would make suitable drumsticks, and they're about the right color. The foot long Tootsie Rolls are the right size, but not shape, or color. Also, you can use licorice to make the cord that runs from the back of the bass pedal to the back of the controller piece (in which case you would either omit the orange M&M, or replace it with a ring of orange frosting around the licorice cord).
  • Integrate the giving of this cake into a full-blown Host a Guitar Hero/Rock Band Party. Make the recipient of the cake play Painkiller (one of the hardest drumming songs in Rock Band 2) on Expert.
  • Consider using cupcakes instead. It's a lot less work.
  • If basing it on the Wii version of Rock Band use white and very light grey instead of black. The buttons are also different.

Warnings

  • This does look like a lot of work; it took the article's original author's wife a total of ten hours to do everything, but she took her time to ensure everything was done right and looked great. Set aside a day for a project like this. Pace yourself, and don't get frustrated or overwhelmed.
  • This cake tastes exactly as good as a regular, unadorned cake. But this is a Rock Band Drum Set Cake! It's worth the effort if you want to do something special for the Rock Band Drummer you love.

Things You'll Need

  • Two or four 9" round cake pans
  • One 13x9" cake pan
  • Cooling sheets
  • Double boiler (or microwave)
  • Cardboard
  • Aluminum foil
  • Wax paper

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