Easter or Birthday Kit Kat Cake
This cake is much easier to make then it looks especially if you have never made a layer cake and comes together faster than you think! Plus who DOESN’T like chocolate, mini eggs, and Kit Kat bars…common now. If you need a special dessert for Easter give this one a try!
This week my kitchen has been exploding with chocolate! I have been testing out different chocolate cupcake recipes as I am looking for a reliable one. I still haven’t quite found it. I was really excited to be able to make a birthday cake this week for my co-worker, K. She is newer to our team and has been such a fantastic addition in so many ways! I have made this cake once before for our admin at work for her birthday but used M&Ms on top. Here is the instagram photo.
I chose to use a boxed cake mix for the base as it was a weeknight after all. As mentioned previously, I only use Duncan Hines and my favourite chocolate one is the Devil’s Food cake. I always make my own buttercream icing. I will give you a list of all of the required supplies as well as the icing recipe below and then we can go through this step by step! Please give this a try one day. It is easy because you can use the boxed mix and because you do not need to know how to pipe icing – in fact it is better that the icing goes on a bit rough as it helps the Kit Kat bars to adhere. Think of how you stick candies to a ginger bread house. If you can decorate a ginger bread house you can definitely do this. There are also plenty of different decorations you can use other than the mini eggs or M&Ms. Check out pinterest for some inspiration! I usually make the cake the night before so that it is cooled and ready to frost.
SUPPLIES:
1 box Devil’s Food Cake mix
39 sticks of Kit Kats
2 cups of Mini eggs (or 1 ½ cups M&Ms)
A colourful ribbon
1 recipe of chocolate buttercream icing
2 8” round cake pans
INGREDIENTS:
¾ cup Vegetable shortening (room temperature)
¾ cup Butter (room temperature)
½ tsp Vanilla
¾ cup Cocoa powder
4 ½ cup Icing sugar (Rogers)
1/3 – ½ cup Milk or Whipping cream
ICING DIRECTIONS:
In your mixer, or with you beaters, cream the butter until it is smooth and uniform. Add in the shortening and mix well until it is completely combined. Add vanilla.
Place a sift over the bowl and add in the cocoa and 1 cup of the icing sugar. Beat until uniform.
Slowly add the rest of the icing sugar cup by cup. The icing will get dry and clumpy. What I do is slowly add a little bit of the milk in between each cup just to keep things moving along.
Once all of the icing sugar is incorporated beat the icing well until it is smooth. The amount of milk that you will need to add will depend on a few factors. Take a knife and see how easily the icing spreads in the bowl. I tried to figure out how to describe the consistency and feel that the consistency of peanut butter is the best way to describe it. I always need AT LEAST 1/3 cup of milk. Whipping cream will make it fluffier but it is not something that I usually have on hand so I did not use it. If you have whipping cream by all means use that. Cover your icing with cling wrap until you are ready to use it.
STEPS:
Make the chocolate cake according to the box instructions. Make sure that you spray the pans really well with Pam or grease them well (You can also make the cakes the night before). While the cakes are cooling prepare your icing according to the instructions above.
Once your cakes are cool, pick the one with the pieces with the most even top to be the top layer of the cake. Put the other cake on the plate as a base. You are not going to move the cake after this so make sure it is the plate that you want. The flatter the plate the better. Place the cake in the middle of the plate and use a bread knife to skim off the top of the base cake so that your top cake rests on it snugly. If you accidently take too much off you can also make some minor adjustments with the amount of icing that you put in between the layers. Try to have it as level as possible.
Take a large blob of icing and put it on your base layer and spread it to the edges. The key to this is always ensuring that you have some icing ahead of your knife otherwise you will pull up the crumbs with the icing. See in my photo how I am pushing the icing forward rather than dragging my knife across. If you are struggling to spread the icing you can also freeze the base layer and ice it while frozen but I honestly don’t think that you will need to do that. If you are really having trouble evaluate how thick your icing is and perhaps now is the time to add more milk. Don’t be skimpy with the icing. It looks like you will be spreading a lot but keep in mind that this is the center of the cake and that this is a thin layer when you think of how tall the slice of cake is. You want at least .5cm of icing on there.
Now put the top layer on. Check to make sure that the cake is still level. If it is not then even it out with some icing on the middle layer. Once it is as level as it is going to get then frost the sides of the cake. Again, it is easier to apply a large blob of icing then smooth it out. Do not worry about the sides being smooth. The Kit Kats will stick better when they have something to adhere to. Now ice the top of the cake. Be generous. At this point there will be some icing left and that is okay as we will need a touch more. If you have a ton left though think about whether you have added enough – last chance. With a wet paper towel clean your plate off so that there are no icing or crumbs.
Take a piece of Kit Kat bar and see how tall the stick is compared to your cake. You will need there to be a bit of height to hold the candy in but too much might look funny. I cut 1cm off of the Kit Kat bars as my plate did have a bit of a lip and made the sticks sit too high. I cut the extra piece off the bars before I separated each group of 4. They cut nicely and did not make a mess. Just use a sharp knife.
Now build your Kit Kat fence! Once this is done, see if there are gaps between the top of the sticks and they cake. Mine had some. Take some icing and fill it in. Place one hand against the outside sticks so that you do not push them off while spreading the icing. I would also now spread a tiny bit more icing on the top so that your eggs have something to stick to. Lightly press the eggs into the frosting.
Tie a ribbon around the Kit Kat bars to finish it off!
If this cake is going to sit out overnight I would put it in the fridge. If not, I wouldn’t bother.
Enjoy and Happy Easter!!