FOOD Archives - Kacia | Coconut Robot

pinata reveal cake! // DIY

Remember when we found out this growing baby-bump was a boy? Shock. Complete. Shock.

Yes….I’m still shocked! So excited and so shocked.

It was so fun when I asked Jacquie if she’d make the cake for us — especially when she decided to find out at 20 weeks…but not at the ultrasound like they typically have done in the past! We decided a baby-reveal-cake-swap would happen, obviously.

Enter nervous sweats.

Um y’all? In real life, Jacquie is an amazing cake decorator — in a long list of crazy amazing talents she possesses! — like legit cake baker and maker and designer. Legit.

Me? I’ve designed, baked and made about a million cakes….in my head. You know, while I watch the Food Network Cake Challenges and things.

Obviously.

So to say I was nervous about making her reveal cake is a bit of an understatement.

Just like I had done, Jacquie had their ultrasound technician put the baby’s sex on a piece of paper inside an envelope. She dropped it off at my place — and I had until about 6:30 that evening to bake, make and deliver this cake to her home! Her sister was heading back home, so they wanted her to be there as well!

The cake actually worked and wasn’t half bad, so I thought I’d share what I did with y’all! About mid morning, I decided a piñata cake with tons of sprinkles would be most fun — especially since she had a 4 year old and 2 year old who were anxiously awaiting cutting into this cake to find out if she was getting a little brother or sister!

I began by making 4 cake rounds — I used 8″ cake rounds and white cake. I utilized my favorite frosting color tip into the cake batter — using Trader Joe’s’ freeze dried berries as the food coloring! I had blueberries and raspberries ready to go — and when I read “it’s a Girl!” the blueberry bag went back into the pantry!

The berries are so easy to use! Empty the bag of fruit into a blender or food processor and blend into a fine powder. Mix with frosting or in this case cake batter!

The 2 cake rounds turned out a bit more purple than I’d hoped — I should have used strawberries! So then I used pink food coloring for the last 2 cake rounds!

I let the cakes cool and then flattened the tops using my handy cake-leveler. You know, the one I purchased for all of my cake decorating…. and used for the first time during this little project. I know. Ridiculous.

I layered them up with frosting in between. The first layer is a solid purple layer — no piñata pockets in it.

Before stacking the second layer, I used a round cookie cutter and made three holes as shown below.

Fill’m up with sprinkles! Disclaimer: I went through 3 large containers of pink sprinkles. Don’t skimp. :)

The next layer was a purple layer with 5 “piñata pockets.” That is a very technical term, folks.

The top layer was another bright pink layer with a large pocket in the center. Harlow loved helping me pour all the sprinkles — spwint-els — into the cake!

Next up was frosting this dang thing. After hours of staring at it and covering every pink crumb I could find I decided that they make frosting a cake look way easy on the Food Network.

Just sayin’.

During my frosting fun, I was trying to figure out what on earth to do to decorate this fun thing! Jacquie of course knocked it out of the park with the cake she made for us!

I decided to whip out my ScanNCut … of course! And make this fun little cake topper using some wooden discs, colored vinyl and wooden dowels….also known as chopsticks. Yup. True story.

Our favorite Thai restaurant here in Pittsburgh has the best chopsticks! They aren’t the ones that are attached at one end, they are just perfect. Yes, I just went on a tangent about chopsticks….someone help me.

If you’ve never used adhesive vinyl before — don’t be scared! I was laughing with my sister last week that I’ve gone a bit nutty with the label making — but I just can’t help it.

I created the circle designs using the built in patterns on my ScanNCut — I unified a circle and text together. The size was dictated by the wooden circles I picked up at the hobby store.

If you are using a cutting machine like the ScanNCut, you want to cut only through the vinyl, not the sheet the vinyl is sticking to. If you are cutting the vinyl by hand, you will most likely cut through that backing paper — it’s okay, it just might be a little more difficult to remove.

Next, you will use a transfer or contact paper. This paper is slightly tacky and sticks to the front, non-sticky side of your vinyl. Remove the vinyl paper backing, and you are left with the sticky part of the vinyl ready to use.

Line it up on your final piece — in my case, the wooden circles — and press in place.

Voila! Cake topper complete. ScanNCut to the rescue.

I wasn’t able to stick around to watch them cut into the cake — I even wore gloves when I delivered it, because I accidentally dyed my thumbnail pink, and I couldn’t get it completely off to save my life! Whoops!

Jacquie sent me a photo and told me that her four year old, Lilly, declared it was a piñata when all the sprinkles fell out. I hadn’t quite figured out what a cake like this would be called, so piñata it was!