Candy Corn Explosion Cake

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Well known fact: I love candy corn. 🙂 Last week I talked about making Candy Corn Rice Krispie Treats. It’s October, so no need to leave the subject of candy corn anytime soon! We need more. I decided to make a Candy Corn Explosion Cake!

You might remember I made an explosion cake for Valentine’s Day. It took a couple of tries, but it finally worked. It was so fun, I wondered, what about doing one with candy corn?

So I made a pound cake batter, since it is sturdy, and dyed two of the cake pans orange and yellow, leaving one white.

After baking the layers and letting them cool, I started with the bottom layer, yellow. I used yellow food coloring to color the icing and place a layer of icing on top of the first layer.

Next came the orange layer. I used yellow and red food coloring to make the orange icing for this layer.

You’ll notice I cut a ring out of the middle of each layer using a biscuit cutter. This is so you will have a cavity in the cake to put the candy.

So before placing the top white layer of cake, you fill the bottom two layers with the candy. I used a mixture of candy corn, mini candy corn, and chocolate pieces. You won’t cut a hole in the top layer.

Then I placed the white layer on top and iced the entire cake with a “crumb coat.” I then refrigerated the cake for about an hour.

After the crumb coat is nice and chilled, it’s time to add the candy corn colored icing! I used food coloring to dye some white icing in the orange and yellow colors.

I applied it a bit sloppily because I wasn’t going to leave it like this. I wanted to give it an ombré type look. I used a pastry scraper and held it perpendicular to the cake and applied pressure as I rotated the cake to blend the colors.

When you do that, the colors blend together seamlessly.

Then comes the fun part–cutting it open! An explosion of candy corn! 🙂

In addition to the candy corn, you can see the differently colored layers of cake. My layers are more subtly colored than actual candy corn. That wasn’t really on purpose, but I like the way it looks.

I think you really have to make the batter look much darker than you like in order for it to bake up with a vivid color.

So if you want your cake more vivid, really go heavy on the food coloring.