How to Make a Piñata Cake! _ Cupcake Jemma

Hello .

I'm here at the Crum and Do Shop in Soho and here at Crumbs .

And do we get asked to make a lot of celebration cakes in all sorts of sizes , shapes and flavours .

And one of the most popular types of cakes we get asked for is the pinata cake .

Now , what you might not realise is that it is a piece of cake to make .

You just need a few hints and tips and I'm gonna share those with you right now .

Now , to get us in the mood , I've put a few bits and pieces of Mexican paraphernalia in the kitchen .

Jab it up a little bit .

It's not completely essential to this recipe , but I find that it helps .

Now you can use whatever cake that you want to start with .

I'm just gonna use vanilla cake .

I'm gonna be cutting holes right through the middle of some of these layers .

So it's important to choose a recipe which isn't full of lumps and chunks and bits of fruit and stuff like that just because it will make it quite difficult to do that neatly .

So I'm just gonna use vanilla sponge you can use whatever recipe you like .

There's a few on my , um , channel , which you might like , and I'll put links to those as well so you can check those out .

But for now , I'm gonna get them with levelling and trimming my cakes as usual to level my cakes .

I'm gonna be using a cake leveller .

Now , having one of these in your kit is a bit of a no-brainer .

Really ?

You can do this with a serrated knife or just any knife , but lots of things can go wrong with that , including slicing your hand off .

Um , so I will always do that with one of these just because it makes sure all my layers are the same size .

So I'm gonna start by just taking off the top layer of this cake to neath up a little bit very gently .

Just draw your cake , leveller backwards and forwards like a kind of sore until he's gone all the way through .

Just get rid of that layer and I'm gonna continue to do that for all of the rest of my cakes .

Once you've levelled off all your cakes , it's then time to trim the edges .

And I always like to do this using a cake drum ?

Um , I've baked eight inch cakes and I'm using a seven inch drum just to lose that little bit of brown that goes around the edge .

So I'm just gonna pop this on the top and then with a sharp knife , keeping it vertical just cut all around the cake board .

And if you wanna use your off cuts for anything like cake pops , you can just put them in a bag , pop them in the freezer , and they'll keep there for a month or so .

So just keep doing that until you've done all four layers .

Now it's time to make the holes for the sweets to go in , and you might be surprised to hear that you don't actually need a really , really big hole .

Uh , the bigger the hole is , the less structurally sound the cake will be .

So I'm gonna use a cookie cutter , which is about two inches wide up for my seven inch cake .

Obviously , if you're making a really , really big cake like a 10 inch or a 12 inch , maybe make your your hole bigger but not massive , because otherwise your cake's gonna fall in um so just using your cookie cutter for the first one .

I'm gonna do it by eye .

So try and line it up as best you can just by sight .

And when you're confident you've got it right in the middle .

Just chomp down and remove that middle piece .

So for the next one , I'm going to gently pick up that O shaped cake and lay it over the top of the next layer .

And doing it like this will ensure that all the holes are in the same place .

I'm just gonna grab my cookie cutter again and push it down into the bottom layer .

And I'm gonna do the same thing for the third layer .

Just laying over 10 on top of that and jumping through .

Now , I'm not gonna do the fourth layer because that layer is going to be like the lid of my pinata cake .

So for now , I'm just gonna start assembling and I'm gonna be using a turntable to make my life a lot easier .

And I'm gonna assemble it all onto a cake drum , which is slightly bigger than the cake .

So this is an eight inch one , so to start with .

I'm just gonna use a bit of butter cream to help stick the cake down .

So the next thing I'm gonna do is grab one of my little os and gently layer as in the middle as possible on the board , and I'm going to apply a generous layer of butter cream onto that first rim .

I'm just gonna keep it simple and do vanilla butter cream , but you can have jam if you want , but just make sure you put your jam on top of the butter cream and not the other way round .

Once you have a nice , even layer of butter cream , grab the next layer and just very , very carefully line it up with the bottom one .

If you want to learn a bit more about splitting , filling and butter creaming a layer cake , then I have done a special video for that so you can go and check that out .

But for now , I'm gonna keep going , layering and filling my cake until I've hit the third layer .

As you're building it up , make sure that you coat the inside of the hole with the butter cream and that'll just lock the crumbs in but you don't wanna go too excessive on it .

Otherwise it's gonna be full of buttercream and not sweets .

Now , before we put the lid on , obviously we need to fill this guy with as many sweets as possible .

I'm gonna be using miniature Smarties , but of course , you can use whatever sweet you like .

I find that the ones with kind of a crispy sheller work the best because it tends to stop them from melting inside there .

So just using a scoop , gently scoop them in and just fill the hole until it's levelled with that layer so that you don't have a mound of sweets .

Now it's time to put the top layer on , so they just very carefully line that up with the rest of it .

So the next step is to give it a good crumb coat .

This is great because it locks in all the crumbs .

It gives us a really nice clean surface upon which to decorate the cake .

And if you do want to learn a bit more about decorating and butter creaming a layer cake , then I have actually done a masterclass video .

So I'll put a link to that in the description box below , and you can check that out .

And once that's done , it just needs to go into the fridge to set for about half an hour .

Now it is time for the exciting part , and I'm going to decorate this cake to kind of look like a pinata .

I definitely don't want anyone mistaking it for an actual one and whacking it with a stick , but I thought it would be good to show you how to do ruffles on a cake at the same time .

So to start with , I have five different colours , all loaded up in a pipe bag , and I'm just gonna show you the nozzle that I'm using .

It's called a petal nozzle , and it's really big , this one .

And basically it's kind of like a calligraphy pen , almost , but with a fat part at one end and a thin part at the bottom .

And the thin part is the bit which is gonna give your ruffles or your petals a nice frilly edge .

So I'm going to just start with purple .

I have my cake on a turntable and starting at the bottom with the fat part nearest the cake .

I'm gonna start doing little wiggles now .

Obviously having it on a turntable does make this a lot easier , because I can move it and squeeze my pipe and out at the same time .

But I'll never do any more than sort of two or three inches at a time just because there's still a danger of kind of stretching out and making a mess .

And once you've joined that up , it's time to move on to the next colour .

And I'm just going to layer over the top of that by about half a centimetre .

Now you don't need to be too uniform with this .

Don't make all your wiggles exactly the same size .

This is supposed to be roughly and kind of a little bit messy , like a real pinata .

So just keep going , alternating your colours until you reach the top .

Now you'll notice that I've done that last round of ruffles a little bit proud of the surface of the cake , and that way , when I'm D decorating the top , it can be nice and flat rather than dome shaped .

So just keep going with your ruffles and ever decreasing circles until you hit the middle and There is the finished pinata cake ready to be sliced open .

And for all those goodies to come spilling out , this really is a brilliant cake for a party to surprise all your guests with .

So let's have a look inside .

Look at that .

Really impressive and really , really fun .

Thanks so much for watching .

I hope you've enjoyed this video .

And if you have give it the thumbs up .

And if you haven't already subscribed to my channel , then you can do that at the end by clicking on the link .

And if you make this guy , then please tag me in your pictures using the hashtag cupcake .

Gemma , I'll be back next week with another recipe .

And until then , I'm just gonna see how many Smarties I can get away with eating before anyone realises