The Most Amazing Smartie Cake

300g sunflower spread

300g caster sugar

6 eggs

300g self raising flour

vanilla essence

300g butter

700g icing sugar

vanilla essence

milk

1 packet white chocolate drops

lots and lots of Smarties

It was Rhi’s 18th birthday and of course decided to make the birthday cake. I had been thinking about what to make and trying to get some inspiration. My initial idea was to cover a chocolate cake in malteasers. After a random chat with the party girl herself I found out that what Rhi wanted was a vanilla and butter cream creation. We also decided to swap from malteasers to M&M’s.

The only thing was when I went to the shop and saw the price of the M&M's I decided to change to Smarties.

After gathering the ingredients together I got to work.

As I only possess 1 cake tin I had to do the cakes in two parts so I measured out half the ingredients and mixed together. 

                               

Once mixed I tipped the mixture into the cake tin that I had previously lined with baking parchment and put into the over to cook (170 C)

        

After about 20 – 25 minutes the cake was ready.  I had given it the wobble test, the poke with a finger test and a skewer test and they all seemed ok.  So out the cake came and I tipped it out onto the wire rack to cool.  I then repeated the process all over again because of course I only have the one tin.

Once the cakes had cooled down I sliced each one in half so I had 4 layers.  I placed one layer at a time onto my glass cake stand and spread with some butter cream.  I then sprinkled some white chocolate drops on the top.  I placed another layer of cake on top and repeated the spreading and sprinkling. Once the layers were piled up I covered the whole cake with the butter cream and tried to smooth as best I could.

                   

Now came the fun decoration part.

                             

I tipped all the Smarties out onto the table and sorted them into the different colours.  I then played around making different patterns to see what worked best.  Eventually I decided on a wave of rainbow colours.

To help me keep the pattern while decorating the cake I drew a wavy line across the cake in the butter cream.  I then laid the first line of Smarties on to the cake following the line.  I followed by placing the next layer of a different colour following the contours of the previous line until the cake was covered.

To finish off I inserted a wire into some Smarties and stuck these in the top of the cake for decoration.  I had hundreds of Smarties left over so spread these around the base of the cake.