For Christmas I received a fun silicone pan to make D20 dice! I’ve never played a game that uses this kind of dice, but I know it is used in Dungeons & Dragons, so I thought using it would be perfect for this year’s Annual Game night. I don’t think I’d do cupcakes again since there are probably better ways to take 
advantage of the detail in the pan, but they arrived intact to the party, and looked fantastic next to Robin’s Cheese Jenga and Cream Cheese Dice!
The pan is food-grade silicone that snaps the two halves together to make a 3D dice shape you can pour into from the top face, which is 1 and meant to be the bottom when 20 is displayed on top. I used a fine crumb white cake mix 
hoping for the number detail in the mold to show in the cake itself. The pan instructions said to fill almost to the top, but that wasted so much cake batter as it exploded like a volcano in the oven! My next attempt when filling it less didn’t reach the top, so that was 
almost half a cake already wasted…sheesh! For 17 successful dice, I ended up using 3 cake mixes, enough for 3 full 2-layer round cakes, but had two full containers of scraps from all the overflow…plus it took forever since the pan must 
cool enough before removing the dice or they will deform, then wash the pan, dry it off, spray again with nonstick spray, then try baking another 4 cupcakes, hoping that the leftover batter hasn’t lost its rising ooomph too much from sitting for at least 45 minutes while the first 4 baked!
Since you can’t see anything inside the pan to know if the cake is done baking, I went by the volcano scraps on the surface being slightly brown. That was a good temperature since they remained moist in the middle without being underbaked…but even if the number detail 
had been preserved, which wasn’t visible at all, the browning was completely uneven, so I would not want to serve these naked. The bottom was so much more browned than the top it was a hard crust, so I trimmed that off, plus you need to trim the top face flush to meet the other sides, resulting in even more cake scraps. 
Now I knew I needed to cover the cupcakes somehow, but I was less than 24 hours to the event and really needed some sleep!
I thought of trying some fondant or modeling chocolate, but I couldn’t figure out a quick way to line the pans to capture the number details without having weird seams that would be difficult to smooth. I ended up trying a flood coat of 
royal icing spread over them in attempt to keep the crisp corners, icing around the sides up in the air, then smoothing the tops and sides after setting them on wax paper to dry, but I didn’t have overnight for royal icing to set completely.
When the royal icing had just barely crusted over, I was able to use my black food coloring pens to write the numbers on, using the pan interior to get the numbers in the correct places and orientation. I did try to flip them to frost the bottom too, but since the rest 
wasn’t dry enough, I ended up ruining a good side, so I gave up, drew only numbers that were visible when displayed on the serving plate, and finally arrived to the party a full hour late! So much for an entrance!
I was able to squeeze my plate near the brilliant Cheese Jenga and the Cream Cheese Dice that Robin had made, which made for a great photo…but the even better photo was Jen’s “critical bite!” haha! I had to have the joke 
explained to me, but rolling a 20, the maximum score for this D20 dice, is a “critical hit” for Dungeons & Dragons!
Everyone at the party agreed they were a little too big as individual cupcakes, and I agree cake is not something I would try again in this pan since I really want to take advantage of the numbers in the mold. I already have some other ideas that I hope will be easier to execute, but we’ll see how they turn out first…
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