Making Bento Cakes – Tutorial

Hi Everyone. I am so excited to be back with a NEW video tutorial. If you didn’t know, I’ve had the last few months off as I recently had a baby. Hendrix is now 5 months old and whilst I’ve been off I’ve been seeing some amazing bento cakes online. I knew I wanted to add my own to the Cakes by Lynz YouTube channel. So if you haven’t tried making a bento cake yet, you’ll find my tutorial below where I make 2 different kinds.

What is a Bento cake?

So what is a bento cake? Bento cakes or lunch box cakes got their names as they are individual miniature cakes which are presented in food boxes or as they are known in Japan; bento boxes. This cake trend first started with small 4 inch cakes being added into small bento boxes. This made the perfect individual treat. Over the last few months, this has evolved to the small cakes being added into cupcake boxes, along with some beautifully piped cupcakes.

In this tutorial I’m going to be showing you how to make both!

How to make a Bento Lunch Box Cake

Click below to watch step by step how to create your own bento cake ⇩

Bento cakes in a cupcake box

This cake was so much fun to make and you don’t need a special box to create it. This started out as a regular cupcake box with space for 6 cupcakes. You’ll see in the tutorial I cut the box to open up the space meant for 4 cupcakes to fit in a 5 inch cake. This gave me 2 spaces to add 2 single cupcakes. This really does make the perfect gift and it can be designed for any occasion, just by changing the message in the center.

As I mentioned, this cake was a 5 inch sponge cake which measured 2 inches in height. I actually baked half of my vanilla sponge cake recipe and cut my cake into 2 layers. This gave me the perfect sized cake for the cupcake box. The cake was then filled and decorated using my American buttercream recipe.

In the tutorial I go through how I achieved each colour of buttercream and which piping tips I used. I finished of the cake with the ‘Flamingo Fling’ sprinkles by Halo Sprinkles (you’ll find a discount code at the bottom).

You can also see in the tutorial how I piped these chunky rainbow rosette swirls on the top of my cupcakes using the 1E piping tip.

Bento Cake Boxes

For the second Bento cake I create, this is a slightly smaller cake and measures only 4 inches. This really is the perfect sized cake for just one person and it fits perfectly into these cute cardboard food boxes I got from The Cake Decorating company.

Now 4 inch cakes are not a size cake I bake often, so I don’t actually have a tin for these. I baked a 5 inch cake and used a cookie cutter to cut it down. Alternatively if you’re making a few of these cakes you could bake a square cake and use the cookie cutter to cut out your layers.

I then used the 1M piping nozzle to pipe this pretty 2 tone buttercream border and finished it off with some ‘Tickled Pink’ Sprinkles, again by Halo Sprinkles.

Adding a personalised message with Sweet Stamp

Bento cakes are the perfect cake to let someone know you are thinking of them and a great way to personalise your cakes is with a little message on the top. In the video tutorial I show you 3 easy ways to create personalised messages. The first 2 are with the Sweet Stamp OutBoss stamps. These are pre-made designs which you can push into fondant, for a super quick and beautiful design. You can either paint your design or use the two tone method you see in the Happy Birthday example.

Another option is to use the Sweet Stamp letter sets to make your own message, just as I’ve done here with ‘Love you’. For this I used the Trendy and Timeless letter sets which are two of the smaller letter sets Sweet Stamp sells. These are the perfect size for a small message and also great for cupcakes too!

For this topper I used some blank edible paint and a really tiny paintbrush to paint inside the embossed letters. This does take a little more time than using the OutBoss stamps, but I always find it quite relaxing painting inside the letters.

Sweet Stamp Discount Code

I used lots of Sweet Stamp tools for these cakes and Sweet Stamp have kindly given me a 10% off voucher code to share with you. This can be used on any purchase made on their website, including the Halo sprinkles. To receive the 10% off all you need to do is visit their website sweetstamp.online and enter the code CAKESBYLYNZ at the checkout!

I had so much fun making these cakes and I really hope you enjoy the video and will find it useful if you want to make your own bento cakes.

If you haven’t already you can subscribe to my YouTube channel for more Free cake decorating video tutorials.

Tools I used

I have put a list below showing all the tools that I used throughout this video or if you would like to see all my favourite cake decorating tools just click here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/cakesbylynz

• Lunchbox Bento Cake Boxes
• Olbaa Cupcake Box: Olbaa Cupcake Box
• SweetStamp Outboss Stamps (Use code CAKESBYLYNZ for 10% off)
• SweetStamp Trendy Letter Set (Use code CAKESBYLYNZ for 10% off)
• SweetStamp TimeLess Letter Set (Use code CAKESBYLYNZ for 10% off)
• SweetStamp Brushes (Use code CAKESBYLYNZ for 10% off)
• SweetStamp small pickup pad (Use code CAKESBYLYNZ for 10% off)
• Halo Sprinkles (Use code CAKESBYLYNZ for 10% off)
• Prop Options Acrylic Boards
• Turntable
• Acrylic Smoother Tool
• Wilton 1M piping tip 
• Wilton 2D piping tip 
• 1E piping tip 
• 4B piping tip 
• 6B piping tip 
• Piping bags I use 
• SweetStamp Pink Gel Colour (Use code ‘CAKESBYLYNZ’ for 10% off)
• SweetStamp Violet Gel Colour (Use code ‘CAKESBYLYNZ’ for 10% off)
• Edibleart Black Paint

~ Please note that some of links above may be affiliate links. If you click the link and purchase any item through that link, I will receive a small commission from the website but this does NOT add any additional costs to you. Thank you so much for supporting this blog x ~

5 Inch Bento Cake Recipe

Author: Cakes by Lynz

Bento cakes are miniature cakes which make the perfect gift

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 45 minutes mins

Decorating TimeDecorating time 30 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr 25 minutes mins

Servings 4 (4-6 servings)

Recipe Type Cake Recipe

Keyword American Buttercream, Bento Cake, Vanilla Cake

Ingredients

  

For the Cake

• 6 oz Self Raising Flour (170g)
• 6 oz Room Temperature Butter or Baking Spread (170g)
• 6 oz Caster Sugar (170g)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp Vanilla Essence / Flavouring

For the Buttercream

• 18 oz Icing Sugar (500g)
• 9 oz Block of Salted Butter (250g)
• 1 tbsp Vanilla Essence / Flavouring
• 2.5 tbsp Milk

Instructions

• Into a mixing bowl sift in the plain flour. Add the bicarbonate of soda, the ground cinnamon and the ground ginger and pop to one side.
• Into a saucepan add the butter, caster sugar, the brown sugar and the golden syrup and place this onto your hob until all the ingredients have melted together.
• You then want to add your melted ingredients to your dry ingredients in your mixing bowl. Using a wooden spoon or spatula mix this all together until it forms a dough. You can finish this off mixing it with your hands to make sure the ingredients are all combined.
• Take a piece of cling film / plastic wrap and push down your dough, coving it over. Place this into the fridge for 30 minutes.
• Whilst your dough is in the fridge you will need to print off and cut out your template pieces. You can find my template here.
• After 30 minutes take your dough out of the fridge. You can then dust your surface with a little flour and roll out your dough until its around 5mm in thickness. Then use a knife to cut out all of your shapes and place on a baking tray.
• Place your cut out shapes into a preheated oven set to 180 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes. You want the edges just to start changing colour.
• After 10 minutes you can take your shapes out of the oven to let them cool. I like to use my templates and carefully (they will be hot) cut around the template a second time, to cut off any areas that have spread in size. This will help your house fit together a little easier.
• You then have all the pieces for your gingerbread house. I like to use royal icing to stick my pieces together. Watch how to decorate your Gingerbread house in my tutorial above.

Plus why not save this tutorial for later and pin it to Pinterest