Fortnite Playstation Controller Drip Cake

I’m going to be totally honest… I am not entirely sure exactly what Fortnite is. All that I know is that it is a universally loved game right now, and that it resulted in an absolutely awesome cake design.

One of my mom’s friends, Mary, frequently asks for cakes for her grandchildren.

(And she seems to have set a trend with her grandkids—she now has to have an Esquire Cake for every birthday or risk facing the wrath of a grandchild who did not get a cake like other said grandchildren). 

Mary is wonderful because she has unique design requests and trusts me to pick any design I want to try; she is also universally thrilled with however my cakes come out.

She recently came to me with a request for her grandson’s birthday cake, and described him as a “gamer.” I went with a combination PlayStation/Fortnite design, as Mary mentioned her grandson used the PlayStation console, and also likes Fortnite.

To make this cake, I started by making a life-sized PlayStation controller for the top of the cake. I made the controller out of fondant, using my husband’s out of commission controller as a reference.

You better believe I had to use a controller that was no longer in use, as my husband is generally using his game  controllers while I bake. 

After shaping the fondant, I covered the controller using glaze made of a 1:1 mix of high proof clear alcohol mixed with corn syrup. I usually use 150 proof clear rum.

Don’t worry- the alcohol evaporates so that it cannot be tasted when the decorations are eaten, and you don’t have any intoxicated cake eaters. 

I paint the glaze over dried fondant decorations to give them a high shine. It dries overnight, and the fondant decoration can then be handled without smudging. I think it worked perfectly here because I wanted the controller to look shiny, like real plastic. After the glaze, I used royal icing to pipe on the shapes of the controller buttons, and let the whole thing dry overnight. Here’s what the finished controller looked like:

The next day, I got right into stacking and filling the cake. I made two big batches of buttercream—one a bright blue, and the other a dark black. Because I made more blue frosting, I used that to fill the cake.

I generally don’t make many black cake designs, because black food coloring is probably one of the most horrid tastes in the world and it takes an obscene amount of it to turn white buttercream a rich, dark black. 

Here, the cake was chocolate so I thought a mix of chocolate and vanilla frosting would be great. Turning chocolate frosting black is MUCH easier and requires much less food coloring, so the taste is not as bad.

After filling the cake, I crumb coated it, using a scraper to smooth the crumb coat, and popped it in the fridge to chill.

Then, I went back to frosting. I wanted a pretty clean half and half look with the blue and black, so I piped the frosting onto the cake before smoothing.

After piping the frosting on to a relatively even thickness all over the cake, I smoothed the sides using a cake scraper and the top using an offset spatula. Pro tip: run your scraper and spatula under very hot water before each swipe to get perfectly smoothed buttercream.

After smoothing the sides and top of the cake, I made the decorations. I used my Cricut Explore Air 2 to cut a sugar sheet in the design of the Fortnite Logo, adding a “Happy Birthday Max” to spice it up a bit. Sugar sheets are great because they can be cut into extremely intricate designs using my Cricut that I just can’t manage using fondant and an exact-o knife.

I put the cut logo design on thinly rolled black fondant, and used my exact-o knife to cut the black fondant around the edges of the white cut design. I adhered the cut sugar sheet to the black fondant using edible glue. I then attached the whole fondant and sugar sheet design to the cake by gently pressing it into the buttercream and smoothed it using my hands and a fondant smoother.

I was super nervous about the sugar sheet detaching in the fridge, so I repeatedly added more edible glue to the design as I worked on the cake. It turned out fine after sitting overnight in the fridge and didn't separate at all.

I also cut black and white controller shapes out of fondant and sugar sheets to attach to the cake. To do this, I printed a small controller shape, cut it out, and used that as a stencil to cut the sugar sheets and thinly rolled black fondant. I attached those to the cake by gently pressing them into the buttercream.

After chilling the cake for at least another hour, I was ready to apply a drip. I went with a bright white drip on this cake to match the logo design on the front. To make the drip, I used a basic white chocolate ganache (1/3 cup heavy cream, 1 cup white chocolate chips) with white gel food coloring added.

Fun fact: apparently, you can substitute whole milk mixed with melted butter for heavy cream—a fact I discovered when I realized I had no heavy cream at 11pm the night before I had to deliver the cake. Thank goodness for Google, amirite?

Once the cake is thoroughly chilled, you can apply your drip using either a spoon or a squeeze bottle. I prefer the squeeze bottle method, and usually try a test drip before doing the whole cake.

As you can see in the video below, I had to fix the drip multiple times because I wasn’t sure on the consistency of my Frankenstein butter/milk drip. This is why you want your cake to be really cold when you drip, because with really cold buttercream you can easily remove any bad drips without pulling off too much of the frosting.

After applying my drip to the edges of the cake, I covered the top with the ganache. I smoothed the ganache using an offset spatula, working quickly to make sure it didn’t set before I could smooth it.

Then, I added a few frosting swirls on top using a mixture of the black and blue buttercream. I also added a bunch of various blue, black, and white sprinkles with edible blue cake glitter.

To finish, I attached the controller to the top of the cake, giving it a little bed of buttercream swirls underneath to rest on so it sat at an angle on top of the cake.

And that was it! A full video of the process is below.

Let me know what you think! If you try this Fortnite Playstation Controller Cake, please leave a comment below and show me how it went for you. Be sure to tag me in any social media posts @esquirecakes or use the hashtag #esquirecakes so I can see your beautiful treats!