Recipe: Fudge Brownie Piñata Cake with Vanilla Buttercream & Sprinkles

Summary: I’m strangely not into eating sweet but I LOVE making desserts and baking. Mr Ask, on the other hand, has a straight up sweet tooth! So when our Sixth Wedding Anniversary came around and I realized the theme was CANDY – I went a little crazy! We share the work of making a four course meal for each other (see the whole thing here) and I was on dessert! Mr Ask NEEDS cake to be chocolatey, so I was thinking of using my well-loved Brownie Recipe,  tweaked for structural stability. That’s the type of cake settled. I think cake only exists as vehicle for buttercream, so that’s frosting settled. I’m also into embracing my inner child, so sprinkles had to be the decoration – they are tiny candy after all! And piñata makes perfect. Plan is settled!

I’d seen piñata cakes and they seemed easy enough in theory. But I am not good at making smooth, neat buttercream coatings. And I’m adapting a brownie recipe. I’d envisaged small but tall. Would it be structurally sound? Would I make a hash of it? Only one way to find out….

Despite my desire to use a straight sided cake pan, I wasn’t spending $40 to buy a few new 5”or 6” pans. Straight sides make the buttercreaming process much easier and neater. In the end, I used some ramekins (these ones) to bake the brownies. I made six rounds but decided five was enough layers. Which left me with a whole brownie piece and the three centre pieces. My Sister made short work of those. I cooked them in two batches of three. The first were cooked for 35mins and were VERY fudgey. They were the middle tiers. The other three I baked for 45mins for a more stable top and bottom layer. Since the chocolate in this version was melted, both were still moist.

I baked on one day and iced on the next. You really need the time because the buttercream needs to crust in the fridge a few times. If you are a pro at baking, you will laugh at how I iced this. But if you are a beginner like me, you’ll probably find this do able. You’ll need some tools to get the job done. You’ll need a sturdy cake board (this was damn heavy!) I used one several inched bigger than the cake, so the candy has somewhere to fall. You will need a piping bag or two (no tip needed), some circle cookie cutters and a long metal spatula (see mine for the style). The rest can be winged. So don’t be sacred if you are new to this but get the right tools, make some room in the fridge and take your time.

Mr Ask let out the most amazing Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhat when I cut open the cake! It made every minute of work worth it. This truly is a fabulous celebration cake for any occasion. I will be making more in the future. In the end it wasn’t too hard to make, just terrifying to carry in the car!

Ingredients

For the Brownies

• 1 1/2 cup plain flour
• 1 1/2 cup cocoa
• 3 cups brown sugar, packed
• 1 cup dark chocolate melting button, melted
• 6 eggs, lightly beaten
• 500g melted, butter
• 2 tsp vanilla

For The Filling and Buttercream

• 250g butter, softened
• 500g icing sugar
• 4-6 tblsp milk
• 350g sprinkles
• 300g mini M&M’s or other candy
• White gel food colouring (optional)

Instructions

For The Brownies

1. Preheat oven to 160C. Grease 6 x 5 ½” or 14 cm round cake tins or ramekins and line the base with baking paper.
2. Add flour, cocoa and sugar to a large bowl and mix well.
3. Mix in eggs, vanilla, melted butter and melted chocolate.
4. Spoon onto baking tray and bake for 35-45 minutes. Set on a cooling rack to cool

For the Butter Cream

1. Add the butter to the bowl of a stand mixer and beat for a minute. I was at Mummy Ask with a regular mixing bowl and a 1970’s set of electric hand beaters, they worked fine but took longer. Be patient grasshopper.
2. Add half the icing sugar and beat in on low. Add the remaining icing sugar and beat in. Add milk and vanilla.
3. Now beat until super smooth. High speed for at least 10 minutes! If you are adding white gel food colour (it helps to knock out the yellow from the butter) do so towards the end and beat it through. Adding more until you are happy.

To Assemble

1. Use a cookie cutter to remove the centres of the three brownie layers that will go in the middle. Reserve the sturdiest layer for your base and flattest (but sturdy) layer for the top.
2. Fill a piping bag with buttercream and snip off the tip. Pipe a small blob onto the centre of the cake board and place your base layer on top.
3. Pipe a ring of icing around the base layer and settle your first holey layer on top, smooth away an icing that is in the centre hole. Repeat with each layer but don’t put on the top! Fill the cavity to the top with mini M&M’s and then use icing to glue the lid on!
4. Put the whole thing in the fridge for 30mins, to let the buttercream crust up.
5. If you did not have straight sided baking tins, there will be gaps where the layers meet. Pipe icing into the gaps, all around, you can be messy. Now pipe some icing that goes from cake board to top at about three or four points around the cake.
6. Use the spatula to smooth everything out. This is a sort of crumb coat (the crumbs get trapped in this layer, not the final one) and you just want a thin layer that spackles over any gappy parts. Cover the top too.
7. Again back into the fridge for 30mins or so.
8. Using a similar technique as before, pipe, then smooth the remaining icing. It’s not super easy but go slow and stay calm.
9. Once you have it fairly even and straight, heat up the spatula with very hot water, quickly dry well and smooth further. Repeat until you are happy.
10. You could position the cake board on cooling rack over a tray but it felt too precarious and I wasn’t risking the whole thing to save some sprinkles! I just put it on the draining board. Anyway, grab a handful of sprinkles, bring them to the base of the cake and gently bring your hand to the top. Repeat until the sides are covered, then pat on to the top.
11. We use a pastry brush to gently remove the sprinkles from the cake board. Then the whole thing can go in the fridge to crust for 30 min or up to a couple of days. Once crusted it can sit out at room temp (not if it’s hot) a few days, un cut. Or once cut in an air tight container.