Candy + Cake = YUM!

My friend Drew turns 30 this month and his lovely wife has planned a surprise dinner for him. At this age what do you get someone for their birthday? A card? A gift? I figured a good fall back plan for Drew would be beer. But being the DIY-obsessed person that I am I always want to MAKE something. So what do you make a 30 year old man? Certainly not any of my cutesy or random crafts. I decided food would be a good choice. And, being a birthday, why not a cake?!

At first I thought it would be funny to do some kind of boob cake (Drew hearts boobs) but then I decided to go PG rated. I somehow fell upon a blog that had a basic tutorial on barrel cakes. (Wouldn’t you know I cannot for the life of me find the link now!) I was immediately drawn to the fact that this blogger pointed out how easy it is to make a fantastic looking cake even if the cake has lots of flaws. Perfect.

I bought a regular Chocolate Devil’s Food Cake mix and tried to find peanut butter frosting to go with my Kit Kats and Reece’s Pieces I planned to use with the cake.

I couldn’t find PB frosting so I bought cream cheese frosting instead. But then, when I got home and started making the cake I thought, “What would Alton do?” And I made my own peanut butter icing – delicious!

1 Cup Creamy Peanut Butter (I used Skippy Natural)
2 Cups Powdered Sugar
1 Stick Butter
3+ Tablespoons Milk as needed

Cream together the PB & butter. Gradually add the powdered sugar and milk as necessary to keep it thinned out, then beat the heck out of it for 3+ minutes. I kept adding milk (maybe up to 1/4 cup??) to make it really creamy so it wouldn’t tear the cake.

So, I baked my two round cakes (even though I think one is an 8″ pan and on is a 9″ pan – I figured this would be a flaw I could cover with frosting!). I hate letting cakes cool, but I suppose it’s pretty important when trying to layer cakes nicely, and, by the way, this is my first attempt at doing a layered cake.

Yes, my layers were slightly flawed because I didn’t let the cakes cool long enough. Oh well! If that happens simply place the chunk back on the cake if you can, or leave it off and fill the void with frosting. I frosted the cake with the (delicous) peanut butter frosting and you can’t even tell the layers are not exact!

Then I placed the Kit Kats around the edge. NOTE: Six Kit Kats is NOT enough for a 8-9″ round cake.

Off I ran to the grocery store to buy more candy. This particular cake took 9.5 Kit Kat bars. (Baby Kayden had the other .5 Kit Kat bar.) Then I tied a ribbon around the cake.

Finally, I dumped the bag of Reece’s Pieces over the top!

 To better transport the cake I got a plain cake box and dressed it up a bit with some scrapbooking paper. Voila!