Go Back
Print Recipe
5 from 7 votes

M&M Pinata Cake

This M&M Pinata Cake has three layers of delicious chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream, and a hidden M&M centre.
Prep Time45 minutes
Cook Time45 minutes
Decoration Time1 hour
Total Time2 hours 30 minutes
Servings: 16 servings
Author: Sarah Mark

Ingredients

For the Cake

  • 475 g Light Brown Sugar
  • 475 g Unsalted Butter or Stork
  • 425 g Self-Raising Flour
  • 50 g Cocoa Powder
  • 9 Large Eggs
  • 1 tsp Baking Powder
  • 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
  • 50 ml Whole Milk

For the Buttercream

  • 700 g Icing Sugar
  • 50 g Cocoa Powder
  • 375 g Unsalted Butter
  • 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
  • 3-4 tsp Whole Milk

For the Decoration

  • 400 g M&Ms
  • Sprinkles

Instructions

To Make the Cake

  • Preheat the oven to 170C (150C Fan). Line three 8” cake tins with greaseproof paper and leave to one side.
  • In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
  • Add in the flour, cocoa powder, eggs, baking powder, vanilla extract, and milk. Whisk until all combined.
  • Pour the mixture into the individual cake tins and bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes. You will know they are ready when they are springy to touch.
  • Leave them to cool in the cake tin for 15-20 minutes and then remove and put them on a wire rack to cool fully.

To Make the Buttercream

  • Once your cakes have cooled make the chocolate buttercream.
  • In a bowl mix together the icing sugar, cocoa powder, butter and vanilla until combined. The mixture will be quite thick
  • Put your buttercream into a piping bag with a large round nozzle and leave to one side.

To Decorate

  • Using a 5" cookie cutter cut a hole in the centre of 2 of the 3 cakes and leave to one side.
  • Place one of the cakes with the centre removed on your serving plate and pipe the buttercream on top. Smooth using a spatula, don’t worry is any of the buttercream splodges out the side.
  • Place the second cake with the missing centre on top and pipe the buttercream on top and smooth. Fill the hole in the centre with M&Ms until it is full.
  • Finally stack the final cake on top.
  • Pipe the buttercream onto the top of the cake, again don’t worry if it goes over the edges.
  • Using your cake smoother smooth around the sides of the cake. Don’t worry if you can see the cake through the buttercream, this is just the crumb coat. We will cover the cake soon.
  • If there are any gaps, pipe buttercream into the gaps and then smooth again using your cake smoother.
  • Once there are no gaps in your cake pop it into the fridge until the buttercream has hardened.
  • Once the buttercream has hardened, pipe the remaining buttercream around the sides of the cake
  • Using your smoother, smooth around the sides, if there are any gaps fill these with the buttercream and continue to smooth around the sides until the cake is smooth. You will most likely take some of the buttercream off the cake if you do pop this back into your bowl.
  • To smooth the top edges of the cake, use a palette knife and smooth any buttercream into the top of the cake.
  • Pipe some swirls onto the top of the cake and decorate with M&Ms