A Candy Cake for Dad

I did it! Yes!! I set out to do something really new and different for my dad's Father's Day/Birthday cake this year and I was able to do exactly what I had envisioned!! You know when you have a vision of something and it just doesn't come out like you'd planned? That happens to me alot but this was a pleasant exception!

My dad's birthday is on June 20th so we always celebrate it on Father's Day. This year is his 50th so I wanted to make a very special cake for him. I'm a great cook but not so much in the bakery department so I decided to get creative. I've seen a few candy bar cakes created on the Cricut message boards so I decided to search the internet to expand on the ideas I had seen.

I was inspired by this woman's creations http://www.pamcake.com/ and after browsing her website for about 20 mins, I decided I could imitate some of what she did and spin it to work for my occassion.

I wanted a LARGE cake. This became an instant problem when I went to buy styrofoam for the inside. I can't BELIEVE the price of styrofoam! After perusing my local Michael's, I decided to head to an old craft store that I haven't been to in over 10 years. It's a run down lil' old place but wouldn't you know it, they had exactly what I needed! I decided to go with 3 different sizes of round paper mache boxes. They are 13 inches, 9 inches and 5 inches in diameter. The cost was half what it would have been to create the same sized cake with a styrofoam center.



The next challenge was the candy. I wanted to decorate the cake solely with my dad's favorites and still keep some color coordination (color coordination was the only thing I found lacking in the cakes from the site listed above -- they were a little too ..... confetti for me). I eyeballed what I thought would fill up the boxes nicely and purchased ALL of my candy at WALMART (I later had to run to my local grocery to grab one more package of fun sized snickers and they were almost $1.00 more per package -- sheesh).

This is the candy I settled on. My original plan was to make a band of licorice at the top of each layer almost like an icing/border thing but I found that licorice is too waxy to adhere with hot glue so I ditched that right off. Anyone want a 2 lb bag of licorice?

~Insert V8 bop to the forehead here~

I also didn't end up using the cinnamon bears and later added some reeses singles cups to the bottom layer. And I can't account for the peanut butter twix -- they were an impulse buy, near the register...... I thought I might use them but now I'll have to eat them -- oh darn.



I used hot glue for the entire project and to offset the effect of hot glue on chocolate, I put everything in the freezer for about an hour before I started. I also glued the lids upside-down to the bottoms of the boxes to separate the layers nicely. I covered the sides of the lids in a brown satin ribbon from Michael's.

I used skewers, Accent Essentials, Paper Pups and Celebrations for the top. My dad has a Great Dane and a Standard Poodle -- hence the dog cuts. I'm going to add 'googly' eyes to them tomorrow to make them extra cute and silly. I used a generic sentiment since it's for both his Birthday and Father's Day. The flowers have rolos candy in the centers and they are all embossed with CB swiss dots, though you cannot see the detail from this picture.



This was loads of fun and turned out fabulous! The cake stands 2.5 feet tall with skewers and all. I'm so excited to see his reaction tomorrow. TFL!