m&m's Gravity Cake

OK so on second thought, since it was my brother in law's birthday, would it be weird if we didn't have an actual birthday cake and just a strawberry jelly hearts cheesecake? It probably would have been fine. But I had a few hours on my hands before the party, so I decided to cross another item off of my "to bake list" - an m&m's gravity cake. 

m&m's gravity cake

It looks pretty straightforward to make right? Bake up your favourite cake (in this case, chocolate cake), crumb coat it, cover the sides with kit-kats and then dump a bag of m&m's on top. Ah, but how does one get the gravity-defying m&m's bag to float over the cake, with a steady stream of candies flowing from the bag? 

chocolate cake covered in chocolate ganache

I turned to a trusty tool for help. The humble chopstick. Stab the chopstick straight into the cake. Take some leftover frosting or ganache and smear a bit on the end of the chopstick. Take the empty m&m's bag and stick it on top! To make it more realistic, you can stuff the bag with some cotton.

royal icing and a chopstick.

To get the m&m's "flowing" out of the bag took a bit of trial and error. At first, I used some of that leftover ganache to try and stick the m&m's on the chopstick. But one by one, they would start sliding off and make a big chocolatey mess on the other m&m's. And of course, when you pick up the messed up ones, they stick to the clean m&m's and leave a bald spot on the cake. I even tried waiting 15 minute intervals between stacking to let the ganache dry before putting on the next layer. This worked until I got halfway up the chopstick. But then the m&m's still kept sliding off! I didn't want to cut the chopstick short and have a sad-looking stream of m&m's. 

still cool from the back

So, I busted out the royal icing (I always have some in my fridge), and of course, that worked muuuch better. Just dab a little on the back of each m&'m and stick away! Royal icing dries pretty hard, so this totally did the job. I had that chopstick covered with m&m's in no time. 

Note to self: don't put the candles so close to the bag! (cuz it caught on fire!!)

My brother-in-law was pretty happy to be surprised with TWO cakes for his 30th birthday celebration! And, as it turns out, his wife had some good news over dinner, so technically we were celebrating two things! Good thing there were two cakes :)

chocolatey goodness