Lollies & Chocolate Birthday Cake
We recently celebrated another February birthday with an escape room game party. You can see all the details here including tablescapes and food choices. It was a great night but wouldn’t be a birthday without a cake. I asked my friend what her son’s favourite chocolate and lollies were and she said Kit Kat and Snakes. Tony loves red frogs and raspberries. This was my inspiration for my. lollies and chocolate birthday cake.
THE CAKE
The cake itself was chocolate. I used a packet cake again. This is the one I used. If you have read my other cake posts you will know that I always add in extra butter and eggs when I use a packet cake. It helps make the cake more moist and improves the flavour. I used two of these packets for the large sized cake I made. Two more tablespoons of butter was used along with an additional 3 eggs.
I cook the cake the day before I need it and store in the fridge. This allows me to cut the layers more easily. While talking about the cake you will notice from my pics that the top dropped a little bit but don’t worry if that happens you won’t notice it at all. The cake gets cut in half and I placed that side down so once the cake is filled you don’t even know. Never panic when things go wrong you can usually hide any flaws.
PUTTING THE CAKE TOGETHER
The cake will be topped off with a simple buttercream and then decorated with Kit Kats and lollies.
Next on the agenda is the cake filling. The boys are not really in to complicated flavours so I chose a simple vanilla pudding filling. Before putting a soft filling in your cakes you should build a buttercream dam around the outside. This will help stop the filling from coming out everywhere.
Because I wanted to cover the outside of the cake with Kit Kats I decided I would make a large amount of vanilla buttercream and then split it in two. One part will be left vanilla the other half I added 1/4 cup cocoa powder and 1 tablespoon of milk. I used the chocolate buttercream on the sides and the vanilla on the top of the cake. As the cake was going to be covered in lollies I didn’t want to make the buttercream too thick as it will be sweet enough.
I used family Kit Kat blocks for the outside. It took almost 5 blocks!!!!
DECORATING THE LOLLIES & CHOCOLATE BIRTHDAY CAKE
For me the best part of making the cakes is the decorating. I love it!!!! For this cake I wanted to use the boys love of lollies for the inspiration while also keeping it looking “pretty”. To achieve this I chose to stick with a red and white theme which I think came up amazingly well.
I used Darrell Lea Red Bullets to outline the individual sections and they worked a treat. You may have to trim a few to fill in the space properly.
The final decorations were easy to place inside the boxes. I alternated red and white.
For your information I’ll list the items I used to decorate the cake but the colours you use will determine what lollies you choose.
- Kit Kats – original – 5 blocks;
- Darrell Lea Raspberry Bullets – one packet;
- Raffaello – 9 pieces;
- Red Snakes – two packets of mixed colours to give me enough red;
- Macadamia Nut and white chocolate cookie bites – one packet
- Red raspberries – one packet
- Lindt white chocolate – one block
- Red frogs – one packet
Vanilla Buttercream
Equipment
- Stand mixer
Ingredients
- 690 grams Icing Sugar
- 500 grams butter I use a good quality butter because you really taste the flavour
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 60 mls pure cream
Instructions
- Beat butter using stand mixer until creamy.
- Add one cup of icing sugar at a time. Turn machine off between additions or you will end up with icing sugar everywhere. Once all sugar is added mix on high for three minutes.
- Add vanilla and then add the cream 20 mls at a time until desired consistency is achieved.
- Whip until really smooth and creamy.
Notes
Vanilla Pudding cake filling
Equipment
- Stand mixer
Ingredients
- 1 pkt vanilla pudding mix
- 700 mls cold milk
- 1 cup pure cream (whipped)
Instructions
- Pour milk into the bowl of your stand mixer and sprinkle pudding mix on top.
- Whisk until fluffy (about a minute) and then put in the fridge to set for about 10 minutes.
- Fold cream into the pudding mix. I had half of this mix leftover after filling the cake. It was actually delicious with chopped fruit.
This cake was used as part of the birthday party I planned for my best friend’s son and Tony. You can see all the table setting details and menu here.
