Butterfly Cake

My birthday was during Passover this year, which did not stop me from making a cake.  I just made it two weeks early.  Actually, I was recipe testing a KLP cake, but the frosting was out of a jar.

All you need for this design is round cake pans, frosting, food coloring, and something to be the body, like a Twix.  You will need toothpicks or skewers if you want to do the antenna balls.  No shaped pan that you'll never use again required.  You can use a piping bag and shaped tips if you want, but I went for the soft, kind of Smurf cartoon look (shocker) and brushed on the contrasting frosting with an offset spatula.  Decorative sprinkles or chips are entirely up to you.

The fun part of this design is how much "garbage cake" you end up with.  Some of it is used for the antennae, but mostly it's snacks.

Quick note, I let the cake dome up on purpose, so the wings would have some height.  If I was making a taller cake, I would level everything off.

1.  Start with a round cake.  Layers are fine, but you'll have to stack them while cutting.

2.  If doing any kind of layer, fill and crumb coat.  Freeze at least half an hour to make it easier to handle.

3.  Cut the cake in half.  I probably should have used a ruler or something.  One half was definitely larger than the other.  On the cake plate, you will be putting the halves back-to-back.

4.  Get out a melon baller and a bowl and gently carve the halves into the shape you want.  I wasn't going for precision and eyeballed it.  With flat cakes, you can stack them with parchment inbetween and get perfectly symmetrical wings.  Save the scraps for the antenna balls.  You won't need all of them, so snacking is permitted.

5.  Crumb coat the cut edges.  Freeze the cake again to set the coat before frosting again for the final layer.  I was glad I had already decided not to make a "perfect" frosting job, because even this was hard.  I was kind of wishing I had bought fondant; but then, you have to eat the fondant.

6.  When the base frosting is the way you want it, transfer halves to the serving platter with the candy body between them.  I really liked the look of the Twix, and then you get to eat the other one.

7.  Decorate wings with other colors of frosting, sprinkles, or anything else that seems appealing.  Working with a small cake, I went simple with one color and more of the chips that I had used in the filling.  For a larger cake like a 9", you would have more room for more intricate designs.

8.  Mix a little frosting into the cake scraps, just enough for them to hold together, and make two little balls.  I put too much frosting in mine and had to freeze them before they would stick to the toothpicks.  Skewer onto toothpicks or wooden skewers and coat in sprinkles or coconut if desired.  Attach to the "head" of the candy and you are done!

Difficulty rating  :)