Giant S'mores Cake Tutorial

My favorite cakes to make.... well...I kind of hate making all cakes now. The fun got completely sucked out of it when it was a side business that completely took over my life and home and made me hate it....alot....but I digress.  

I should rephrase it to "The cakes that don't make me want to bash my head in nearly as soon into the process" are cakes that are more kitchy and fun like my Giant Hamburger Cake, or the time I made a hairy butt crack cake...or this cake that's a giant Smore.   These are the kind I enjoy more

The cakes that are 2 tiered with stripes, polka dots, little balls, or EXACT replicas of decorations drive me crazy

(Where is this cake anger coming from?  Whoa Nelly)

The second my sister told me Elsa was having a camping themed birthday the image of a giant smore would not leave my head

So I set to work. 

After a long day at work. 

All night. 

Covered in sugar.  

Till 2 AM.  

But it's all good

You will need (2) 3in square cakes and (1) 9 inch round 

If you want to fill your cakes then slice them across the middle and fill. I find that partially frozen cakes are much easier to slice.  Make sure that if you are filling it with something different then just the same frosting that you are covering it with then you will need to "dam" it to keep it from seeping out the sides.

On this layer I did chocolate frosting as my filling and marshmallow butter cream was going to cover the cake

Put the top on and then frosted it with the marshmallow butter cream.  Then I covered the entire thing in homemade marshmallow fondant dyed tan.  This will serve as the bottom graham cracker of our smore

Then next layer was our "chocolate bar"  Take one of your square cakes and trim the sides a little bit so it's a tiny bit smaller than the bottom cake and repeat the process, only this time I did the frostings reversed from the last time.  I cut and filled it with the marshmallow and then covered the entire cake with the chocolate buttercream and DIDN"T cover it with fondant because I wanted to keep that melty frosting look

Now me just being me....I would have stacked the layers perfectly, but The Boy convinced me to put it on a little twisted so it would look more casual....like you just threw this smore together.

Totally not what I would have done on my own but I think I like it 

See those things stuck into the cake?  Those are bubble tea straws....the big wide straws.  I used them as supports in my cake as opposed to just dowels.  They are easier to cut and are awesome at bearing the weight of cake tiers.  Just cut them all the same height right at the cake height

For the next layer it's the marshmallow of course!  Cut and fill your 9 inch round cake.  If you're wondering why I said 9 in when the squares are all 8 inch...let me explain.   

You now how when you make a smore for real once you put the toasted marshmallow on and you push down on it with the top graham cracker and it kind oozes over the side?  Well that's what I was going for.  I wanted it to be a smidge bigger so it would look like it got pressed down in the sandwich making process.  Does that make sense?  A smooshing effect?

If it doesn't make sense at all you can ignore me completely and use and 8 inch round

After I cut and filled it I covered it in plain white fondant  (for that smooth marshmallow look) and placed it on a piece of cardboard the exact same size as the cake . I made a small hole in the middle of the cardboard before hand

Then, I placed a dowel, (or in this case a skewer) in the middle of the bottom two layers of cake and gently lined up the hole in the cardboard with the skewer and pushed it down.  This way the cake "sits" on those straws I put in the cake and doesn't push down on the cake and smoosh it

If I were placing this layer on top of a fondant layered cake it would be no problem, but since this was going on top of a frosted cake I cut out a small circle of waxed paper that would keep the frosting going all over the top cake board

Then I made another graham cracker the same way I did the other one and stuck it on top of the marshmallow

I used some of my old cake decorating tool....the ones with the ball ends (I don't know the names of these things...obviously) to make the little dimples and the one that looks like a little spatula to make the perforated lines

 

With this design I planned that when it came to cake cutting time I would take off the top 2 layers and cut those two layers together as "slices"  then move onto the bottom two layers and slice those up.

It was delicious!  Graham cracker flavored cake, chocolate, and marshmallow.  

Here's the picture I posted on instagram that night of the finished cake along with my poor sugar coated kitchen

Cake messes are the worst because the sugar ends up EVERYWHERE.  And when it's 2am and you're tired and cranky the aftermath will literally make you want to cry....or maybe that's just me

The birthday girl loved it.  In the midst of the cake eating frenzy with her friends she even made a point to leave the table and ran over to me in the other room to give me a hug and say thank you.  I guess that makes the kitchen disaster a little worth it ;)