My attempt at a candy cake 🍭

I had always wanted to make a cake like this but just never found the time until my good friend requested that she wanted a cake for her birthday and I thought well why not ? She loves sweets and loves cake so I decided to surprise her with this delicious moist bright candy cake !

Unfortunately with most cakes it's never easy to replicate a Pinterest picture so I got some inspiration from the picture below and decided to try my best.

As I live in South Africa I couldn't get these exact sweets so I went sweet shopping at about five different shops until I found the perfect sweets that will make this cake look bright, colourful and inviting.

I got home all excited to start until I realized that I have never done a dripping ganache cake nor have I ever tried to smooth buttericing ? (This is not easy !) but I felt confident so I baked 3 vanilla sponge cake layers in 15 cm cake tins, I let them cool and made 3 different coloured buttercream icing, I then stacked my cake layers and filled each layer with a different colour icing.

I then attempted to achieve that turquoise blue for my outside icing but achieving this colour certainly wasn't very easy without the correct colour but my electric blue would just have to do so I used this and did a thin layer of crumb coat and let it set.

Then for the difficult part .... I now tried to pile on a lot of electric blue icing and smooth it out to look like perfect fondant but this took about 3 hours, 10 different utensils, some hot water and a few extra hands, and unfortunately it still didn't come out perfectly smooth but it was a good first attempt.

I then made a big mistake while making my chocolate ganache, I used cheap white melting chocolate and tried to melt it in the microwave, I was very disappointed when I had lumpy hard chocolate ganache but was hoping it would do. So I mixed in some pink food colouring and poured it over my cake....

It harden in a massive ball of lumpy chocolate on the top of my cake and didn't even get close to the sides ( I clearly didn't do enough research on how to actually do a dripping cake) it was now close to midnight and I was running out of time as I had no more chocolate so I had to improvised, which is a very good skill to have while making a cake. I grabbed an egg and some icing sugar and made some royal icing which I then coloured pink placed some in a piping bag and I went around the cake and slowly dripped some down but my icing was a bit running and just kept dripping ... and was very thin but I was running out of options so I poured a small amount on the top of the cake and let that set.

Then for the fun part, I began to place sweets everywhere and anywhere and pipped some left over yellow icing inbetween, sprinkled some glitter and whala I had a semi decent cake which I was kind of proud of but disappointed in didn't come out perfectly but she loved it and so did everyone else !

A few lessons were learnt during this cake making experience.

• Always do research on the correct recipie and how to do it.

• Always buy extra of the ingredients in case something goes wrong.

• Make sure you have the correct utensils, colours, ingredients and anything else you may need.

• Never give up and try to improvise and do your best.

• Never compare your work to someone else's. 

Below I have include the recipe I used for this cake as well as the buttercream recipie I used.

INGREDIENTS:

* 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

* 2 teaspoons baking powder

* 2 teaspoons baking soda

* 1/2 teaspoon salt

* 2 cups water

* 2 cups sugar

* 6 tablespoons unsalted butter

* 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

* 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

* 1/2 teaspoon of almond essence

* 2 large eggs (room temperature)

Buttercream vanilla icing

* 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

* 3 cups powdered sugar (icing sugar)

* 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

* 3 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 180°C. Butter/ Spray with non stick three 15cm round cake pans. Set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a medium saucepan over medium high heat, combine water and sugar. Bring to a simmer and stir until sugar dissolves, about 1 minute. Remove from heat and add butter, stirring until melted. Let cool completely (about 20 minutes in the fridge) and then whisk in vegetable oil, vanilla extract and almond essence, Beat in eggs. Whisk in dry ingredients, until smooth. Divide batter evenly between prepared pans and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cakes cool in pans until cool to the touch - cut off any hard crusts and even each cake layer

Vanilla Buttercream: In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment (or use hand mixer) cream butter until light and fluffy. Add icing sugar 1 cup at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition. Increase speed to medium and add vanilla extract. Add 2 tablespoons of milk and beat for 3 minutes. If your frosting is too thick, add remaining 1 tablespoon of milk.

Divide equal amounts into separate bowls and colour accordingly

To assemble:

Assemble the 3 layers with a thick layer of coloured icing between the layers. Then apply a thin crumb coat on the top and sides. Pop the cake into the freezer to harden the crumb coat for about 10 minutes. Apply one final thick and even layer around the outside of the cake.

I have improved my smoothing techniques and my dripping cake technique since this cake and will share another cake with you soon.

Jocilyn xx