Let’s start by saying the obvious, The unicorn cake, a trend that became an obsession, everything is Unicorn themed lately (an for a couple of years aready), but still, it’s freaking cute and we all fall into it in one way or another. I’ve been meaning to make this cake for the longest time, and my friend having a Unicorn themed party couldn’t have been a better excuse. But is not just a Unicorn cake, it’s also a piñata cake and a funetti cake… Yes, 3 trends in one cake!
I used 3 – 6” pans to bake it. For this, I used my regular vanilla cake recipe, once all your ingredients are mixed and you’re ready to divide and pour the mix into the pans, fold-in 1/3 cup of sprinkles (I find that non-pareils are the ones that give the best “funfetti” effect). Bake as your recipe indicates and let them cool.
Once they’ve cooled and are leveled, we begin staking and icing the piñata. Place your bottom cake and add a layer of icing on top, then add the second cake, which you previosly modified by making a hole in the middle, add more icing and then stack the 3rd cake, in which you also made a circular hole. You want to keep the center you removed from the top cake and slice the top (it will cover the piñata and we need he cake to have a flat top). Proceed to fill the cake with candies (I was lucky this happened around spring time and I was able to find pastel colour M&M’s).
Place the little piece you kept from the center of the top cake to cover the hole full of candies and crumb coat your cake (the “crumb coat” is a layer of icing we apply to the whole cake and cover all sides, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s pourpose is too keep all the crumbs in place so when we go ahead and ice/decrate it, no crumbs will be arond and mixing up with the final decorations).
Once your cake has chilled, ice it in any colour you prefer. I did it white because the colours for the rest were very light and I really wanted them to pop. Next, fill a pipping bag with different colours of buttercream and using different tips, get creative and starting designing the maine of your Unicorn. Once you’re done, let it chill again and while it’s chilling, find a small brush and some black or very dark food coloring, this will be used to draw the eyes/lashes.
No Unicorn is ready without a Horn and some ears, and to make it more magical, some gold should be part of this somehow. A day before baking this I started a little DIY project with fondant, if you know me, you know I don’t like fondant (not into that taste at all), but for decoration pieces it works great. So I made the horn and ears in advance to let it dry and be stiff by the time the cake was ready. I don’t have a full tutorial on that, but you can check this one out, I find it pretty easy to follow.
Last but not least, put all the pieces together and take many many cute photos of your beautiful piece of art!
