Despicable Me Birthday Cake: How to Make A Minion

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After making so many minions for my daughter's Despicable Me birthday cake, I feel somewhat qualified (as Chief Minion) to give this tutorial. Before you embark on this venture, you should note that an alternative, but no less appropriate, title for this tutorial would be "How to Make Yourself A Minion".

So if you are still not deterred by that warning, here goes:

Materials:

1 box Wilton's Pure White Rolled Fondant

3 - 4 strands rice vermicelli

Wilton Paste Colours in Black, Royal Blue & Golden Yellow

Toothpicks

Prep:

Before you start, dye your fondant separately into black, blue and yellow. (More for yellow, less for blue and even less for black). Reserve some white fondant. Depending on how many minions you wish to make, you may not need to use up the whole box of fondant. (I used less than one box for 15 minions). 

Also dye some strands of rice vermicelli black, for the hair.

Sculpting:

Roll out a yellow piece like this!

Give him eyes ...

Roll out a flat rectangular blue piece and wrap it on him like a little diaper

Roll out 2 blue pieces like these (rectangles with bottom 2 corners trimmed)

and attach it to his sides

You may have to do a fair bit of smoothening to make it blend seamlessly. I like to use a toothpick (moistened slightly if necessary) like a mini rolling pin to blend the edges.

Cut (not roll) 2 long strips for the overall straps

Add buttons to the front, and using a toothpick, render the stitching along the edges of overall and in the front (for pockets)

Roll out two long yellow pieces for the arms (note that they have long arms almost reaching to their feet) and wrap the ends in black for the hands.

Give him black goggles and black shoes.  He should start to look cute at this point ... so exciting!

Stick short pieces of vermicelli for his hair, give him eyes (I like to use a 10ml syringe (without the needle of course) to punch out equal size eyeballs) and draw his mouth with a toothpick.

Feel free to give your minions all sorts of different expressions: