Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Please help me! I am making a cake for an 88 year old lady’s birthday and her daughter has requested popping candy in the icing for a bit of fun (I was thinking pastel colours, pretty flowers etc, but no…!) a great fun cake with a surprise is wanted.

Any ideas from anyone with a good sense of humour?!! How would you add the candy – she wants vanilla cake, so I was planning to use vanilla buttercream and raspberry jam filling with fondant – would it work to add candy to the buttercream? She wants a big popping sensation – does anyone have any idea how much to add? Would it effect the taste of the cake much?

Any other fun ideas for the cake would be gratefully appreciated – I only have a week to make this – she has left the design and colours completely up to me…!

Thanks so much!!

Hi goldengoose25

Ideally popping candy should be covered up with a coating of melted chocolate and left to set before adding into filling because it starts to fizz away as soon as it comes into contact with moisture. If you google ‘how to use popping candy’ there should be some tutorials or how tos. I used it in a wedding cake, to be honest I wasn’t that impressed.
Perhaps I should have added a lot more than I did. Not really sure about other idea, I suppose big cake sparklers would be fun, a funny poem, silly cake toppers. It’s difficult without knowing the character of the person and also without being cliched. I’ve looked online for ‘fun ideas for 80th birthday cake’ and found a few things to work round. Hope other members will have some thoughts.

you could possibly leave the center of the cake hollow then fill it with muticoloured popping candy then when she cuts it theres a suprise??