How to make a Pinata Cake filled with sweets

 

[schema type=”recipe” name=”How to make a Pinata cake filled with sweets” author=”Rachel Howard” pubdate=”2013-05-27″ image=”http://www.sundaybaking.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Pinatta-cake-700.jpg” description=”A delicious cake hollowed out and filled with sweets. Ideal for a kids party! ” prepmins=”25″ cookhours=”1″ yield=”10″ ]

It’s my friends 30th birthday coming up so I thought I’d have a practice run at making a pinata cake for her. She hadn’t requested one but I had seen a photo of one and it looked like something I would enjoy trying.

My advice?….Don’t make this cake if you have to travel anywhere with it. It won’t travel. It’s a cake that needs to be made at home, decorated, cut and eaten quickly as as soon as you cut it it can’t hold its own weight.

So Jem…if you are reading this, this is not the cake you will be getting but HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

To make the cake I used a spherical cake tin like this one, but you can use a pudding bowl if you don’t have a tin. And the best way to ‘line’ the tin is by spraying oil all over – I use the Dr Oetker cake release spray.

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You can use any recipe, but make sure it’s for a heavy cake like this pound cake (adapted from the BBC Good Food website)  –

• 170g butter, softened
• 340g caster sugar
• 3 tsps vanilla essence
• 3 eggs , lightly beaten
• 170g self-raising flour
• 55g plain flour
• 11 floz milk

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Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180C
• Place butter, sugar and vanilla essence in a bowl and beat until light and fluffy
• Gradually beat in the eggs
• Sift together the flours
• Fold the flour mixture and the milk, alternately, into the butter mixture
• (i’m not sure if you can see my actual cake, but I coloured the batter with 3 colours – just divide and mix in gel colouring if required)
• Pour the mixture into a greased  cake tin and bake for 45-55 minutes or until the cake is cooked when tested with a skewer
• Stand the cake in the tin for 10 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool

[callout title=Ingredients for the Icing]

• 750g icing sugar
• 240g unsalted butter – at room temperature
• 6 tbsp whole milk
• Vanilla essence
• Colouring of your choice

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Method:

• Beat the icing sugar and butter in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment on a medium speed until the mixture comes together
• Turn the mixer down to a slow speed
• Combine the milk and a couple of drops of vanilla extract in a jug, then add to the butter mixture a little at a time
• Once all the milk has been incorporated turn the mixer up to high
• Beat until the frosting is light and fluffy, at least 5 minutes
• I then divided the mixture into three and added a different colouring to each bowl

How to put the cake together:

• Once the cakes are cooled, make sure both cakes are the same height by slicing the top off if required
• Create the ‘hole’ by carefully cutting out the middle of each cake. Leave at least a 3cm border around the hole to prevent the cake collapsing too soon!
• Fill the hole with sweets of your choice – I used skittles, jelly tots and Maoam pinballs!
• To create the 3 coloured icing I put each colour batch into a small disposable icing bag. Snip the bottom off of each and place into a large icing bag with a large star nozzle
• Ice around the edge of the base cake (this will also help all 3 colours come through) and place the top cake ‘lid’ on.
• Ice the cake – I just ‘blobbed’ on icing all the way round and I was pretty pleased with the way it looked!

And that’s that! The only thing left to do is to cut the cake to let the sweets pour out!