Last month was my birthday, and I had something a bit more ambitious than usual in mind for my cake.

The result was a home-made chocolate cake with vanilla icing, topped with ten individually-made Eeveelutions recreated in chocolate. Spinning this cake on my cake turntable was one of the most satisfying experiences on my life.

If you had asked me how I felt about the Eeveelutions a few years ago, I would have said that they’re cute, but didn’t necessarily warrant their popularity. I’ve always liked a few of them (Vaporeon and Espeon especially), but I resisted the temptation to fawn over the these elemental foxes like the rest of the Pokemon fandom so readily did.

Today, I can’t hide the fact that I think they are adorable, especially when the whole Eevee family is all together. Maybe I’ve just caught the bug, but I feel like their popularity is well-deserved. They’re such a delightful combination of colours and silhouettes, and the family looks wonderfully complete (not that I’d complain about getting new Eeveelutions). As long as they are all together, I am happy.

I didn’t come up with this idea out of nowhere, though! Remember that Project_Eevee Twitter account everyone thought was hyping up Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee, but was just to promote Pokemon merchandise? I’d been following it long before all the game hype, and checked out the Project Eevee website. It features adorable icons of Eevee and all its evolutions, and I downloaded them immediately. The art was so unique, and I knew I would want to use it as a reference or something eventually!



I showed my partner the artwork in April, and her immediate response was “we must put them on a cake. Maybe in May?” I was hoping she’d say something like that! Both of our birthdays are in May, and I wondered if she was thinking of it as a birthday cake. With the promise of making it a project together, I felt confident tabling it while we focused on moving in together.



By the week of my birthday, I was ready to bring it up again, and ask if she’d help me make it. So, with only a few days before my birthday party, we got to work.

My first step was getting the images. I actually took screenshots of the 9 images and hastily erased the backgrounds. I had the idea of them all peeking out of the cake from the beginning, but I didn’t want them all to look squished. I printed and then cut out all 9 Pokemon and tried to visualize how they’d look all sticking up out of the cake. I worried we’d need a HUGE cake! I wound up using my biggest cake pan, which is 11” in diameter, and a bit bigger than necessary in the end!

I went back and made sure I erased all of the background colour to ensure I had crisp, clean images, then printed and cut then out again. I taped each individual Eeveelution to a cookie sheet, and then cut out squares of wax paper and taped them over the Eeveelutions.

Then I got my chocolate ready! When recreating an image in chocolate, it’s usually best to start with the outline, then do other small details before moving on to larger areas. I started off by melting some milk chocolate by filling a bowl with boiling water, then placing a smaller bowl with the chocolate inside that. I stirred the chocolate until it was runny and consistent. I then mixed in black food colourong.

I placed the melted chocolate into a Ziploc bag, and cut off a small bit off one corner, creating a pastry bag! Then I just had to outline the shape by using it like a pen! The chocolate hardens as it cools, creating solid layers. These can be pretty delicate based on how small or thin the chocolate detail is.

I melted down white chocolate with the same method and placed that in a bag to do the whites of the Eeveelutions’ eyes and the shine on Espeon’s gem.

The next day, I started with other small details. When doing multiple characters, I try to look for common colours between characters that I can do at the same time. So I was able to do the red for Espeon’s gem and Umbreon’s eyes at the same time.

I started adding more, larger details, such as the inner ears on all the Eeveelutions, Umbreon’s rings, and the stripes on Sylveon ribbons. I added the shading below each Eeveelution’s chin by dying the chocolate a slightly darker colour, and other shading such as on Flareon’s fur and Vaporeon’s fins, before covering them completely in the colour of the rest of the fur/fins.

Once I had completely filled in each Eeveelution, it was time to reinforce the chocolate…by adding more chocolate! The thicker a piece is, the stronger and more resistant it is to breaks. I was pretty worried about all those ears and little details snapping off! I also added long stick-like bits at the bottom of each Eeveelution so as to place them in the cake. Only the faces and paws would be visible!

Once all of the chocolate had cooled and hardened completely, the chocolate could pretty much be peeled right off the wax paper. All you have to do is flip the chocolate onto its back to see all of the little details we so painstakingly added!

I wish I had kept track of just how long it took to make all these, but I’d guess at least 5 hours. It was painstaking work, and I did almost all of it on my own, which is unusual since my partner is usually the one who likes making chocolate decorations! She just worked on the pink and white and shading on Sylveon, which worked out since that’s her favourite Eeveelution anyway, haha.

Then it was just a matter of icing and decorating the cake! My birthday party had already started at that point, but my partner still worked tirelessly to make me a huge batch of buttercream frosting, and I hastily frosted the chocolate cake I had made the day before. Then we used a sharp knife to make two cuts in the middle of the cake for the two Eevee, and eight cuts all around the perimeter of the cake for the Eeveelution (and an extra little one for Umbreon’s tail)! We washed our hands in cool water to keep them cold so as not to melt the chocolate as we handled it. We tried to only hold them from the weird bottom parts, which we then plunged into the cake. This held the chocolate firmly in place.

I’m pretty proud of how this came out! I wish I’d had more time to get a smoother coat of frosting, and generally make the cake look a bit more impressive. But considering I only had about a day and a half to make such an ambitious cake, I think I did pretty well! I wish I had better photos of the Eeveelutions, but I’m really proud of them!

