This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Durham chapter.
For those rainy Durham days, post-summative stress or simply to treat yourself, here’s my recipe for a fantastic rainbow piñata cake that I made over Christmas for my boyfriend’s birthday (also guaranteed to cheer up just about anyone!)
Ingredients
For the cake:
200g butter
200g caster sugar
4 eggs
2tbsp vanilla extract
100g cocoa powder
M&M’s for decoration/filling
For the buttercream icing:
550g icing sugar
50g cocoa powder
175g butter
1tbsp vanilla extract
2tbsp water
- Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4 and line two cake tins with greaseproof paper
- I decided to channel my inner Mary Berry and make the sponges using the classic all-in-one method, whisking with an electric hand whisk until the mixture is fully combined
- Pour this mixture into the baking tins and pop these in the oven for 20-25 minutes, then leave to cool
- Whilst the cakes are baking, you can get cracking on preparing the buttercream. Whisk the butter and vanilla extract, gradually adding in the icing sugar and cocoa powder (sieved, of course) until combined
- Once cool, turn one of the cakes upside down and mark out a circle on the sponge using a knife. Remove the cake within this circle down to about half of the thickness of the sponge
- Repeat this for the other cake (fiddly, but worth it for the end result)
- Carefully cover the outside edges of each layer of sponge with buttercream
- Place the base cake onto a serving plate and fill it with M&M’s. You can use any sweets of your choice for this, with my personal favourites including Smarties and peanut M&M’s.
9. Add the top cake and coat with a light buttercream layer
10. Decorate however you like! I used the remaining M&M’s to decorate my cake, but feel free to get creative!
Enjoy!