Skittles cake 2 ways

The boy turned 9 a few weeks ago

and as one of his besties has a birthday just 2 days later the boys decided to have a joint birthday bash. So we mums got together in front of their Christmas tree and planned with the boys. They settled on a party at the climbing centre and our boy convinced his pal they should have a Godzilla cake (Godzilla is a newish obsession). But a few days later as I was musing on how to make a Godzilla cake, the boy arrived with another plan and showed me this awesome video. Everyone else agreed and as one of their other pals is celiac, I did a gluten-free version. The cake was a big hit and there was enough left after the party for the parents to sample as well.

gluten-free Skittles cake for a party (adapted from here)

2 packages of gluten free vanilla cake mix (I used Betty Crocker)
2 bags of Skittles, sorted into colours
1/2 c ground red skittles
1/2 c butter
3 c icing sugar
4 tbsp milk
3 packages of  Glutino chocolate wafers

Prepare one big 9x13 cake using 2 boxes of cake mix, following the directions. Once cool, square off the sides and put it on a foil or paper surface suitable for display.

While the cake cools or a day or so in advance make Skittles syrups of various colours. For each colour of syrup, place 1/4 cup of Skittles in a small pan with 1/4 c of water and heat until the Skittles are all melted and incorporated into the syrup. Pour the mixture through a sieve into a clean glass or jar to cool. Repeat with other colours to get a variety of syrups.

When your cake has cooled, poke holes at 1" intervals around the cake with a chopstick or large skewer to create holes in which to pour the syrup. Once the holes are done spoon the syrups over the cake and let them soak in. Try and alternate the syrups over all the cake so each piece will have a variety of flavours.

Grind 1/2 c of skittles in a food processor or blender until finely ground. If you want a fine powder with no chunks, pass through a sieve. Blend the Skittles powder, butter and 2 cups of icing sugar together until fluffy and well mixed. Add in a couple tablespoons of milk and the remaining cup of icing sugar and beat for a couple of minutes. Add in the remaining amount of milk slowly until the frosting has reached your desired consistency. (Try and keep any children in your kitchen from eating all the Skittles frosting). Frost the cake sides and top.

Size the wafers so they are just a bit higher than the sides of your cake and press them into the frosting all around the sides of the cake.

Decorate the top of the cake with the Skittles. Take pictures to share your triumph on social media and then eat.

A couple of weeks ago we went to a potluck Scouting dinner and my boy requested I do another Skittles cake. For this one I passed on making the syrup, instead I ground up orange, yellow and green Skittles into powder, and sprinkled the green and some of the orange powder into the cake batter and swirled it through the batter in a marbled fashion prior to baking. I used yellow and orange powder in the frosting and left the red and purple Skittles for decoration, and skipped the chocolate wafers on the sides of the cake.

Both cakes were a big hit although the syrup one is a bit moister.

making it green

For our boy's 6th birthday party, he'd originally requested a locomotive cake. I do have a book on making kid cakes but it didn't have a locomotive cake that he was happy having, so I went over to youtube for some help. And while scrolling through several videos of train cakes (mostly Thomas the Tank Engine), up popped a tank cake on the side bar. Well, he was enchanted. "I want that", he said. And it looked easier than a locomotive cake, especially the way our boy was thinking it should be. And actually assembling the tank cake is easy. I'm here to tell you that the hardest part is getting the frosting the colour you want it, at least it was for me.

Now I took the easy way out with the cakes. As a couple of the crowd have wheat issues, I went with Glutino's Gluten Free Chocolate Cake mix - 3 of them. I whipped them up and baked 2 cakes, 1 in a 9x13 pan and 1 in an 8x8 pan. In retrospect I could have made the tank using just the 9x13 cake, making it a bit smaller.

Once baked, I cut a round out of the large cake and evened off the edge. I placed this cake on a foil covered stiff cardboard I used for the cake board. I trimmed the 8x8 cake and placed it on top of the larger rectangle and the round cut out went on the top.

 To glue everything together, I used a crumb coat of frosting. I made the crumb coat using food colouring in liquid drops and even using all the green I had, I still only got a bright shamrock green. I set up the layers and covered the cake with this frosting and put it in the fridge to set up.

And then went off to the craft store for gel food colouring - in Moss Green. I had to use quite a bit of gel to get the olive green colour I was going for, but it worked! I frosted the entire cake in the olive green frosting, then added a chocolate roll wafer cookie for the gun, and used chocolate buttons (large) for the wheel rollers with a bit of black frosting gel to outline for the treads.

 Add candles and lego people and the cake was ready for the party. It was a hit and fed a lot of kids and adults.

He’s Five

Today my little boy turns 5. So I spent a good portion of last night baking. I made a wheat free chocolate cake with buttercream, sprinkles, gummy bears and smarties for his party at preschool this morning.

The children are probably eating cake right now as I write this. I’ve been promised pictures. And I baked chocolate cupcakes for dessert tonight and dessert for the family supper on Saturday. Those will be decorated tonight.

When we were talking about T’s cake yesterday he suddenly asked me, “when is your birthday mummy?” I replied that it had been a couple of weeks ago. “But we didn’t bake you a cake” he said, sounding a bit worried. “What kind of cake do you like? Chocolate or lemon?” I told him I liked both so he told me he would help me make a lemon cake for my birthday next year. “Cause you need cake on your birthday”.





This was my baby on his 1st birthday - he still loves cake this much!

birthday cake

So it's confession time. My whole life has gone by and today was the very first day I made buttercream icing. I mean, I've made icing for years and years - ok since I'm being honest here, not so much lately. I confess, in recent years, I have bought icing in a can. I know, move myself to the top of the bad mummy list, I have been giving my child canned icing. But my previous recipe (if you can call it that) for icing was what my mother taught me (yes, I'm blaming it on my mother, shame on me!), was icing sugar, a dot of butter, a dribble of vanilla and just enough water to bind it together. And that served me all these years, well, until I discovered the canned stuff.

So what, you may be asking, caused me to have my icing (frosting) epiphany? It goes like this. I bought myself a few cookbooks for an early Christmas present (another confession for another day...) and one of them was American Test Kitchen Cookbook and while rifling through it a few weeks ago, I noticed there were some pages on frosting. So tonight, as I was prepping T's cake for his preschool party tomorrow and having no canned icing in the house, I thought I would look up a recipe for icing and just see what it was. Well people, can I say I was horrified by the amount of butter called for in the recipe - 2 1/2 sticks of butter. Yikes. I read it again and there it was - still 2 1/2 sticks of butter! Ack. Ok, so in the fine print it said, good for a double layer cake. Ok, all I had to ice (frost?) was an 8x8 single layer cake so I used 1 stick of butter and 1 c of icing sugar, 2 tsp of cream and 1/2 tsp of vanilla. And as I was beating it all together it came to me...............buttercream icing........made with butter and cream! Oh, I get it. Now. So I've been doing it all wrong for years. (and years) Stop laughing. But it is gooooooood stuff. I'll be doing this again. My arteries won't thank me for this discovery but I think my guys will.

And here is a picture of T's cake all ready for preschool tomorrow.

Complete with smarties (as requested), white icing (as requested), it's chocolate (as requested) with car and train candles as a surprise and it is gluten-free so his friend C who is wheat intolerant can have some too.

Happy Birthday my dear little boy!