Happy Cinco de Mayo! I hope you all had plenty of tacos and tequila. To celebrate here on Brainy Buns, this is the most piñata-y cake I could make. Not only does my creation look like an adorable donkey piñata on the outside, but it is also filled with delicious candy that spills out when the cake is cut. But it doesn't stop there! Brightly colored cake layers and churro icing are also found inside. This little donkey is ready to party, right down to his little tail!
The Science.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what flavors to incorporate into this cake. There are so many delicious Mexican flavors to choose from, and for a brief moment I even considered filling the cake with prickly pear jam. In the end, I settled on churros because they're the one Mexican sweet I can never get enough of. In order to get the malty, cinnamon flavor of churros into my cake, I crushed up Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and mixed it into the icing before spreading it between the cake layers. This gave the icing a convincing churro flavor, and also a wonderful crunch! Of course after making this I discovered that General Mills actually sells a churro cereal, so if you would like to try putting that in your icing instead, go for it!The Recipe.
Yellow Cake:
3 1/3 cups cake flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup salted butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
6 eggs
3 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
Preheat oven to 350oF. Spray four 6inch x 3inch cake pans with baking spray and line with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, comine flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat butter in large bowl on medium-high until fluffy, then gradually beat in sugar. Beat eggs in, one at a time. Stir vanilla into buttermilk. Alternately add flour mixture and buttermilk to butter/sugar/egg mixture while beating on low speed. Beat an additional 30 seconds.
Divide the batter equally into four bowls and dye blue, orange, pink, and purple with food coloring. Pour batter into pans and lift and drop the pans on the counter a couple times to eliminate bubbles in the batter. Bake on center rack for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean. Cool the cakes for 10 minutes, then turn onto a cooling rack and remove the parchment paper to cool completely
Buttercream icing:
2 cups salted butter, room temperature
6-8 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, crushed
In a large bowl, beat butter on medium speed until fluffy. Beat in vanilla. Gradually beat in powdered sugar, until icing becomes thick enough for piping. I look for stiff, jagged peaks as my indicator. Adding the sugar in increments results in better incorporation into the butter, so you can use less sugar for the same consistency. If the frosting tastes too sweet and feels grainy, add a couple tablespoons of milk.
Divide icing into five bowls. Tint four bowls blue, pink, purple and yellow with gel icing colors. (It will take A LOT of dye, be patient.) Stir the cereal into the white icing, which you will use between the cake layers.
Assembly:
Gather together these additional supplies:
Candies
Sugar cones
Wilton fondant: pink, black, and white
Once cakes have cooled, use a 1.5-inch round cookie cutter to cut the center out of three of the cake layers. (Do not cut a hole in the top layer.) Stack the bottom three layers, spreading the churro icing between as you stack them. Fill the hole in the center with whatever candies you like. I used pretzel M&Ms because I like the shape and colors, and the crunch adds nice texture. Place the final cake layer on top.
To ice the cake, I used a rose petal tip #104 to make the multicolored ruffles. This will go much faster if you have four #104 tips, but you can switch between colors with one tip if you don't. I highly recommend using a rotating cake stand for this, as well. Rotate the cake slowly and move the tip toward and away from the surface of the cake as you pipe to make the ruffle pattern. I found that three rows of ruffles for each color looked just right. It also helps to start and end rows on the back of the cake, so those seams can be covered up by the tail. To make the ears, take two sugar cones and place them upside down on top of the cake, and cover them with icing ruffles.
To make the donkey's cute little face, knead together some of the black and white fondant to make gray. Roll out the gray fondant with a rolling pin, using a sprinkling of powdered sugar to prevent sticking. Cut out an oval to make the snout, and then roll two U-shaped nostrils of the black fondant. Stick the nostrils onto the snout with a small amount of water and let them set together a few minutes before gently pressing the snout onto the front of the cake. For the eyes, cut out two black circles of rolled fondant and four smaller white circles of fondant. Affix them together with water to create shiny anime eyes before gently pressing them onto the cake above the snout. You can make the tail by rolling a rope of black fondant with your hands, and then snipping and shaping the end to look like hairs. Attach the tail with a couple of toothpicks. The toothpicks will be covered up by the bow, which you can assemble from strips of pink rolled fondant.
Cutting this cake is all part of the ceremony! It's great to hear your guests gasp as the piñata candy spills out. On the off chance that you have cake left over, you can store it in the fridge for a few days.
