Pinata Cake
For Mother's Day a few weeks ago, I signed up to make the dessert. I had been leaning towards something light and simple, but I ran across this recipe and thought it was amazing. However, it's a lot of sugar! I didn't think my parents would like it at all, but my whole family surprised my by saying they wanted to try it, so I decided to go for it.
I ended up not following the recipe at all, but just the idea of it. I baked my own homemade cake, used dulce de leche for the filling, and a traditional Brazilian chocolate sweet for the "fudge" covering. I did go with chocolate chips, M&Ms, and sprinkles for the candy filling though, so that still counts right?
So let's get into it in steps. First I baked the cake. I doubled this recipe but left out the chocolate powder. I split up the batter into two round baking pans.
After baking both at 350° (they took a bit longer since there were two, closer to 50 minutes), I let them cool for about 30 minutes.
I cut both cakes in half to fill it with dulce de leche. Instead of using pre-made dulce de leche, we made our own. You can do this filling up a pressure cooker with water, about 3/4 of the way. Place two condensed milk cans in the pressure cooker and cook them at medium to high heat for 25 minutes. Do not open the pan, even after your timer has gone off. Let it cool for at least two hours prior to unlocking the lid. Let the cans cool completely before opening (we made ours a couple days ahead of time).
Once you've got your dulce de leche and your cakes cut in half, go ahead and spread the filling on the first layer. Cut a whole in the middle for the second and third layers prior to layering them. The bigger the whole, the more candy you can fill it up with.
Place the second and third layers on top of each other, while using the dulce de leche for the filling. Once you've added the third layer and covered the top with the filling, fill up the hole in the middle with goodies. We used about half a cup of chocolate chips, half a cup of Crunch bunches, half a cup of M&Ms, and a quarter cup of sprinkles.
Lastly, top it with the last layer of cake!
For the fudge on the outside, we made a traditional Brazilian sweet: brigadeiro. Rather than letting it cool completely to be able to handle, we used it while it was still warm to hot and spread it around the cake with a butter knife. And add sprinkles to make it happy!
It was absolutely delicious, even if it was an absolute sugar crash. Not even a week later and we were contemplating making another one, maybe a bit smaller this time around.
