Short & Sweet: Sweets Galore!

Sweets Galore!

Over the past year cakes decorated with different sweets have become very popular so I thought I would show you how to make a sweets barrel cake that I made for my friend Emily's 18th Birthday this year.

For this cake I used a basic chocolate cake recipe glued together with a light chocolate buttercream. However, using a victoria sponge, or a citrus cake may also go well with the chocolate sweets. Depending on how rich you'd like the cake to be you can chose any type of sweets that you wish.

Rich chocolate sweets celebration cake

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 25-30 minutes

Serves:10 people

Ingredients:

For the cake:

250g Butter
250g sugar
250g self raising flour
5 eggs (1 egg per 50g)
1 tsp vanilla extract
40g cocoa powder

For the buttercream:

200g butter
400g icing sugar
100g chocolate

Decoration:

3 boxes of chocolate fingers
2 tubes of smarties
1 bag of malteasers
1 bag of minstrels
1 bag of white chocolate buttons

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius/gas mark 4 and line two 20 inch round cake tins.

I started off by combining the sugar and butter using the creaming method. Once fully combined add the eggs one at a time until they are all thoroughly incorporated. Don't worry if the mixture curdles this can easily be reversed once the flour is added. Add the vanilla extract.

Next add the flour and cocoa powder and gently fold into the mixture, being careful not to knock out any air bubbles that have been incorporated in earlier stages. Place half of the mixture into each tin and smooth over the top.

Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until springy to the touch.

Once the cake is cooked and cooled make the buttercream by firstly, melting the chocolate over a pan of simmering water, leave to cool completely. Next combine the softened butter and icing sugar then fold in the cooled melted chocolate. You may need to add a dash of milk to make the buttercream easier to spread/pipe.

Spread a third of the buttercream on one of the cakes and sandwich them together, with the underside of the top cake facing upwards. Next 'crumb' the cake, this is where you pipe buttercream all the way round the outside and on the top of the cake and smooth it until there is a thin layer of icing covering the whole surface area.

Here's the fun part! Now place all your chocolate fingers around the outside of the cake, making sure you do not leave any gaps between them. You can secure them in place using a ribbon. Next divide the top of your cake into four sections using chocolate fingers. There was a small gap in the middle of my cake where the chocolate fingers didn't reach which I filled with chocolate popping candy. Then fill each section with your sweets!

This cake is such a fun bake, and doesn't actually take very long to make, yet still looks like a show stopper!
Happy Baking!

Sweets Galore!

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