I’d seen pictures on Pinterest of a fabulously turned out cake with an M&M’s topping and a Kit Kat outside all tied together perfectly with a ribbon. I know my limitations, if I’d tried the ribbon trick the whole cake would have burst through the M&M’s and I’d have to re-brand it as a kind of American Eton Mess or a post-pinata cake and serve it in bowls.
I tried a slightly easier, quicker, cheatier version.
I was short on time so rather than bake a delicious cake I picked up a 6″ Victoria sponge at the supermarket, and whipped together some basic buttercream icing. If you’re feeling even cheatier than you could buy a pre-iced cake, or even a tub of pre-mixed buttercream to make your job easier and save on large amounts of washing up.
I put a thin layer of buttercream all over the cake, then added a blob of buttercream to the back of each Freddo to ‘glue’ it to the side of the cake like little froggy sentries. It took 12. A bigger cake would take more. You’ll need to do calculations with pi to work out the circumference for a bigger cake, or just buy lots more Freddos and eat the spares.
I poured a pack of M&M’s onto the top and shuffled them about until they were roughly even. I’d intended to buy Smarties but M&M’s were on sale with a giant bag for a pound. Maltesers or chocolate buttons or even Munchies or Rolo‘s would work I guess.
One tiny snag I’d fix next time is that as I used plain buttercream it was clearly visible behind my army of Freddos. If I was doing it again I’d probably mix some cocoa powder in to make a chocolate coloured buttercream so it wasn’t so obvious.
