I LOVE how Kate’s rainbow M&M’s first birthday cake turned out! I was so disappointed when Leah’s 3rd birthday cake didn’t work out properly. I’m so stubborn that I wouldn’t accept the defeat, and I had to try it again on a 1 shaped cake!
The problem I had with Leah’s cake, was that the M&M’s dissolved in the homemade icing I made and fell off. So I didn’t want to take any chances this time. Since I used the same type of icing and cake as I did for the smash cake, I tested how the M&M’s would stick to the icing the day before I made this cake to make sure they would stick:
I used store bought boxed cake (I made the cake from scratch last time) and I used a tub of store bought french vanilla icing. Obviously bundt pans were not going to work for a number 1 so I used a 9″x13″ baking pan for the cake and cut out the shape myself.
When the cake came out of the oven, it had a rounded top, so I just used a large knife to slice off the top to make it lay flat:
I flipped it over on the cutting board and scored the surface of the cake with a knife to sketch out the shape of a number 1. I didn’t bother using a template – a 1 is pretty easy to guess at:
I cut out the pieces of the cake where I made the score lines:
So here is what the carved out number one cake looked like before it was iced:
I transferred the cake over to the cardboard cake board that I saved from the 3rd birthday cake and started icing it:
Once it was fully iced, I started with a diagonal row of red M&M’s:
And kept adding rows in the order of the rainbow colours:
I didn’t think it was going to take a long time, but it did get pretty tedious by the end:
With the 3rd birthday cake, I had the problem that the icing was too wet and the M&M’s dissolved and slid off. This time, I had the opposite problem. By the time I was done putting them on, the icing was getting too hard, and I had to add some fresh icing to the M&M’s to get them to stick:
I was hoping that all the M&M colours would match up along the sides:
But on some sections it just didn’t match up:
It took about 1.5 hours to put all the M&M’s on:
If I had more time, it would have been nice to make a double layer cake by stacking two 9″x13″ cakes and cutting out the number one, but I just didn’t have time.
I love the rainbow colours, and I’m so happy I got it to work this time! I definitely recommend giving it a try! You can check out the rest of her awesome rainbow party here or other first birthday party ideas here.
What a fun cake!! Made with love & M&M’s doesn’t get any better than that! 🙂 Michelle
I love how colorful it is, perfect for the rainbow themed party I am thinking about throwing for my 2 year old.
Great idea! Thanks for sharing!
So cute! Did the color from the M&Ms bleed onto the icing? I was thinking of doing this the night before, but i’m worried it would look bad overnight…
As long as you buy icing in a tub you should be okay. I tried making this cake with homemade milk based icing too and it bled like crazy to the point that all of the side M&M’s fell off. You can search my site for my 3rd birthday cake fiasco to see it.
thanks so much!
Beautiful!!!!!
Can you give me an idea of how many M&Ms you needed for this? I bought two large bags, but I don’t want to run out halfway through!!!
Do the mm fade or get dull if u do the cake the night before?
Thank you! I made this with 2 layers and used the equivalent approximately 9 individual bags of m&ms. The only problem is there are not the same number of colours in each bag (even if you combine the 9 bags together). I ended up sequencing my colours but alternating between yellow and brown (as there were the fewest of these colours). Also, I ran out of reds. I made it with cream cheese icing and it also bleeds but since I had already made the icing the night before and didn’t want to throw it out, I added cocoa powder so that it would show less. Turned out ok but wouldn’t suggest doing it too much in advance.
I never baked this cake but after seeing its positive reviews, I will surely bake this cake in this weekend.
Always i baked such excellent cakes from the site :
https://www.cakengifts.in/cake-delivery-in-faridabad
Can you decorate with these M&Ms on a store bought already iced ready to eat cake? Would the M&Ms have problem sticking?