Learn how to make this fun, easy robot cake. It’s perfect for birthdays and is made from a simple 9 x 13 cake. And isn’t it the cutest robot ever?!
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For his 7th birthday, our son wanted a robot cake. Well, actually he’s the indecisive type and that was what he finally settled on after lots and lots of deliberating.
And after getting numerous of his great ideas vetoed by me because I’m no birthday cake making expert and can’t handle anything that’s too complicated. (Am I the only mom that does that?!)
But when he finally did decide that a robot birthday cake is what I should make, I was kind of excited, because it sounded like a fun idea…and it was!
And didn’t our Mr. Robot turn out to be quite cute? We sure thought so!
Want to make your own easy robot cake? All you need is a basic 9 x 13 cake pan plus a few other simple tools and ingredients and you’ll be set to make a cake that is sure to bring a smile to any birthday child’s face!
Let me show you how!
How to Make a Robot Cake
Supplies Needed:
- 9 x 13 Cake Pan- I really like this one
- Serrated Knife- I used my favorite bread knife
- Cake Board– optional, but handy to place the cake on
- Pancake Turner– to move cake pieces
- Mixing Bowl– I have the Pampered Chef version of this and use it all.the.time!
- Food coloring- I prefer the food coloring gels because they mix in nicely
- Small Sized Blade Ultra Spatula– makes it easy to frost the cake nicely
Recipe Ingredients:
- cake mix or homemade cake recipe of your choice
- Icing of your choice- I love this buttercream frosting recipe
- 2 Oreo cookies
- 18 chocolate-covered mini donuts
- lollipop
- M&M’s
Recipe Directions:
1. Mix up the cake and bake in a 9 x 13 cake pan, according to the recipe that you use. Once the cake has cooled, invert the pan and carefully remove the cake from the pan.
Flipping it onto parchment paper or saran wrap will help reduce the mess.
2. Using a serrated knife, cut the cake into 5 pieces as shown.
3. Arrange cake on a cake board -I covered mine with tin foil-, using piece #2 for the robot’s head and piece #4 for the body. Place a chocolate-covered doughnut between the 2 pieces to create a neck.
Tip: Using a pancake turner to move pieces around works really well!
4. Cut piece #5 into feet. I trimmed off the rounded end part and then cut what was left in half. Then I simply trimmed off one corner of each half to make a shoe shape. Place 6 chocolate-covered doughnuts below the body to create legs and then position the shoe pieces at the end.
(You will not need pieces #1 and #3. I went ahead and frosted them and we enjoyed them for dessert.)
5. Using your mixing bowl, mix up your frosting, then add food coloring to get the desired shade and color.
If you are using dark-colored M&M’s for decoration, you will want to keep the frosting color light.
6. Remove the doughnut “neck” and “legs”, then frost the cake. I like to do a really thin first coat of frosting to “seal” in the crumbs and then go over it all again with a thicker second coating.
Carefully push the doughnut “neck” and “legs” back into place, touching up the frosting as needed.
7. Gently push 3 M&M’s into each shoe, creating “buttons”.
8. Take 2 doughnuts and cut out a small notch to create a hand as shown in the picture above. Then arrange 10 doughnuts, 5 on either side, to create arms, placing the “hand” doughnuts at the end.
9. Decorate the robot’s head. To make the eyes, carefully pull Oreos apart, leaving all icing intact on one cookie, then add a brown M&M. The remaining Oreo cookie halves will become the ears.
Shape a smile out of M&M’s. Finally, add a doughnut with a lollipop pushed through the center to the top of the head.
10. Decorate the body, using different colored M&M’s to create your design. I found it helpful to arrange my M&M’s in the pattern that I wanted, before putting them on the cake.
Additional Helpful Tips:
- Lining your pans with parchment paper makes the cake easier to remove.
- I like to wrap my cakes in plastic wrap and then freeze for several hours before frosting them. This makes it easier to frost because there are fewer crumbs due to the cake being frozen.
- If you are planning to feed a lot of people, you probably will want to make an additional non-decorated cake since this easy robot cake ends up actually not using a whole 9 x 13 cake.
You’ll also enjoy:
Effie
How do the donuts stay in place and not roll around?
Lydia Beiler
You can always add a dab of icing to the bottom of the donut to help secure it. It’s been several years since I made this cake and I don’t remember if I needed to do that or not. But I certainly have done it with other cakes that I’ve made when attaching decorations.
Brenda
Love this cake! Going to try and make it for my son. What color gel food coloring did you use? Sky blue?
Lydia Beiler
It’s so easy and fun! I’m sure he’ll love it. For the blue color, I made white icing and then just added blue food coloring (the shade that comes in the multipack of basic primary colors) until it looked like the shade I wanted. Happy baking!
Barbara
Thank you for sharing this. My five year old twin grandsons loved it!! Your directions were clear and easy to follow. Appreciated the measurements in your reply to earlier comments. We used graph paper to map out the M&M’s on the front.
Lydia Beiler
You are very welcome, Barbara! So happy to hear that it helped make your grandsons’ birthday extra special. And the graph paper idea is brilliant. Thanks for sharing that!
Annabelle
Cake looks awesome & fun. Will give it a try for son’s 6th birthday: it will be a surprise cake!
Lydia Beiler
I hope he loves it! It’s so fun to make.
Pam
I just made it for my Grandsons 4th Birthday. Getting ready to take it to him now. So easy and so cute!!!
Lydia Beiler
Happy birthday to your grandson! And I hope he loved the cake as much as my son did. So fun that you could make it for him!
Brenda F
Thanks for sharing this awesome idea, Lydia! My family and I had a lot of fun with this cake!
ThriftyFrugalMom
I love hearing that, Brenda! It’s just such a fun cake, isn’t it? Glad you all could enjoy it.