Cool Anti-Gravity M&Ms Birthday Cake

I made this anti-gravity M&Ms cake for my granddaughter’s 11^th birthday, so it had to be a little more “grown up” than most of the cakes I have made for her.

The cake is red velvet, a flavour I hadn’t used before, but was so popular that I shall make it again (already had a request for my daughter’s birthday)!

It is a 7” round cake with chocolate butter cream layer. It is covered all over in chocolate butter cream and then chocolate ganache. The ganache was a bit of a disaster as it did not set as I thought it would, but it was delicious.

The lettering was done with tappits. It’s something I’ve only recently started doing. It takes practice but it’s well worth it. I put another cardboard circle under the cake board to give it the correct height for the ribbon.

The sweet packet is a real one supported on a skewer. The stick was covered in chocolate fondant to give the shape. I thought I would use some of the left over ganache to stick on the sweets. This was a big mistake. The sweets just slid off. I melted some milk chocolate to use as “glue” and that worked very well.

I feel I put too many sweets on – less is more as they say. I can see all the mistakes (the “glue” shows through and the shape on the stick isn’t quite right), but I got a lot of “wow’s” when the birthday girl saw it and declared it the best cake I’d ever made for her.

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