Candy Corn Layer Cake

A fun vanilla layer cake frosted in white, yellow, and orange then topped off with white, orange, and yellow swirls dotted with candy corn and sprinkled with fun Halloween sprinkles for the ultimate Halloween treat!

This post and recipe was created for #HalloweenTreatsWeek! I was sent samples by some of the sponsor companies but as always opinions are 100% mine

Halloween is one of my absolute favorite holidays.  I love dressing up at home and at school, seeing all the kids in costume, passing out candy, and making a ton of Halloween treats.

Last year was super fun because J was old enough to go up and down our street to get candy.  This year he will be extra excited to go to all the houses in the neighborhood and get as much candy as possible.

I've been wanting to make an awesome Halloween cake and after a lot of thought I decided on this incredible Candy Corn Layer Cake.  It turned out so much better than I had even hoped!

Ingredients:

• butter
• sugar
• eggs
• vanilla
• flour
• baking powder
• baking soda
• salt
• milk
• food coloring

To Make the Cake:  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.   Spray three 8 inch cake pans with baking spray.   In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar.  Add in the eggs and vanilla and mix until well combined.  In another bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Mix well.  Add half the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until just combined.  Do not overmix.  Add the milk and mix until combined.  Stir in remaining flour and mix until combined.  Divide into three bowls and color one white, one orange, and one yellow.  Pour into the prepared pans and bake for 35-40 minutes.

The cake was a little dense but it tasted delicious. It's also super fun since it's colored and stacked like candy corn.  The frosting was my basic buttercream frosting except for a few hints of Wilton Orange Creme Decorating Icing.

So let's talk about the actual cake.  I added a lot of my homemade vanilla extract because I really wanted to bring out the vanilla flavor.

Then I colored the cakes with white, orange, and yellow gel food coloring.  I simply put them in the oven, baked them, and let them cool.

What type of food coloring do you use?

I like to use gel food coloring.  I find that I don't need a lot of it and it makes the brightest, most vibrant colors.  My favor gel food coloring is AmeriColor gel food coloring.  I use it for all of my baking.

Can I use a box cake mix?

You can use a box cake mix if you are just looking for a cake that looks like candy corn. You'll need two boxes of cake mix and you'll use most of them but not quite all of them.  Follow the directions on the back of the box to make sure they bake up correctly.  I do prefer to use my own cake but in this case a boxed mix would work.

How do you store the cake?

This cake can be stored in an air tight container for up to 4 days.  I do not store it in the refrigerator but you could.  I prefer to put my cakes in a cake carrier for storage because then it's also easy to transport them if needed.  If not, then I use a glass cake dome to store them.

Next came the frosting which was also fun to make.   I made a basic vanilla buttercream again using my own homemade vanilla.  Make sure to use a quality vanilla extract in your frostings.  I kept half of the frosting white then colored a quarter of it yellow and a quarter of it orange.

When stacking the layers I had a fun thought that if the frosting was also candy corn colored it would be awesome.  So what I did was pipe yellow frosting around the edge, then I used the Wilton Orange Creme decorating frosting which came with it's own tip to pipe a second layer of frosting inside the first.   This gave it additional color and it added some orange flavor to the cake.  Then I filled in the rest with the white frosting and stacked the cakes.

Next I worked on the sides of the cake.  I put the colored buttercream in disposable piping bags and added a tip.  I like using the disposable bags because when you are done you pitch them.  No mess, no fuss, no washing of bags.

Anyhow, I piped yellow frosting around the lower third of the cake, orange frosting around the middle, and white frosting at the top.  Then I used a bench scraper to smooth and blend the colors.  It's such an awesome technique that I've been seeing on many of the baking shows these days.

More Halloween Recipes:

• Caramel Silly Pumpkin Cupcakes
• Halloween Ghost Cake
• Spooky Graveyard Cake
• Halloween Layer Cake
• Bloody Glass Shard Red Velvet Cake

Then I simply put white frosting all over the top and instead of worrying about decorating the top I simply dumped a 2 ounce bag of fun Halloween sprinkles on top!  Then I alternated swirls of color as a border, stuck some candy corn in the swirls, and I had an awesome cake!

I was pretty proud of myself for how cool it looked.  Little did I know that when I cut into the cake it would look even better!

I was very excited about this cake but also a little concerned with the weight of it.  I actually took it to my basement to weigh it and found that in total it weighed 6 and a half pounds!   Thankfully we found a few friends to share the cake with and they raved about how good it was.

I'll be honest, I thought the buttercream was spot on and the cake itself had a nice vanilla flavor that paired well with the frosting.  The hint of orange creme was just an added bonus.

So if you are looking for a cake that isn't too hard to make but will totally wow your friends give this Candy Corn Layer Cake a try!  You'll be thanking me later!

If you’ve tried my Candy Corn Layer Cake or any other recipe on Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks please take a minute to rate the recipe and leave a comment letting me know how you liked it. I love hearing from you! You can FOLLOW ME on:

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Candy Corn Layer Cake

Yield: serves 16

Prep Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Cook Time: 40 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours 10 minutes

A fun vanilla layer cake made to look like candy corn that is frosted in white, yellow, and orange then topped off with white, orange, and yellow swirls dotted with candy corn and sprinkled with fun Halloween sprinkles for the ultimate Halloween treat!

Print

Ingredients

For the Cake:

• 3 sticks butter
• 2 ¼ c. DIxie Crystals sugar
• 6 eggs
• 1 T. Adams Twice as Strong Vanilla Extract
• 3 ¾ c. flour
• 1 ½ t. baking powder
• ½ t. baking soda
• 1 t. salt
• 2 c. milk
• white, yellow, and orange gel food coloring

For the Frosting:

• 4 sticks butter
• 6 c. Dixie Crystals powdered sugar
• 2-3 T. milk
• 1 T. Adams Twice as Strong Vanilla Extract
• white, yellow, and orange food coloring
• 1 pouch Wilton Orange Creme Decorating Icing (optional)

For the decoration:

• 16 candy corn
• 2 ounce bag of Halloween sprinkles

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Spray three 8" cake pans with cooking spray. I like to line the bottom with parchment paper but that is optional. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the eggs two at a time, mixing well after each addition.
4. Stir in the vanilla.
5. In another large bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix well.
6. Add half of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until just combined.
7. Add the milk and mix until well combined.
8. Stir in the remaining flour mixture and mix until just combined.
9. Divide the batter into three bowls. Color one white, one orange, and one yellow. Pour one color batter into each of the prepared pans.
10. Bake for 35-40 minutes, turning the pans halfway through the baking. Remove from oven and cool 10 minutes.
11. Run a knife around the edges of the pan and remove the cakes from the pan. Cool completely on wire racks.
12. Meanwhile, place the butter for the frosting in a large bowl. Beat with a mixer on medium speed until smooth.
13. Add in the powdered sugar a cup at a time, mixing after each addition, until the frosting is smooth.
14. Add in the milk and vanilla and mix well.
15. Place half of the frosting in one bowl and a quarter of the frosting in each of two bowls. Color half of the frosting white then the quarter bowls of frosting one yellow and one orange.
16. Place all of the orange frosting in a piping bag with a star tip. I used WIlton's All-In-One piping bags with tips because it made it east. Then place all of the yellow frosting in a second bag. Place half of the white frosting in a third bag.
17. Place the yellow layer of cake on a cake board. Pipe a layer of yellow frosting around the outer edge of the cake.
18. If using the Orange Creme frosting pipe a second circle inside the yellow circle on the cake. If not using the orange creme simply use the orange frosting.
19. Spread white frosting in the middle of the two circles.
20. Place the orange layer of cake on top of the frosting. Repeat the icing layers then top with the white cake layer.
21. Refridgerate your cake for 15 minutes.
22. Remove the cake from the refrigerator and pipe yellow frosting on the lower third of the outside of the cake. Pipe orange frosting in second third of the outside of the cake and white frosting on the top third of the outside of the cake.
23. Using a bench scraper rotate the cake in a circle while scraping the frosting. This will make a smooth outer layer while meshing the colors together. Once the frosting is fairly smooth stop.
24. Top the cake with white frosting and smooth with a butter knife or offset spatula.
25. Using your piping bags pipe a white swirl, yellow swirl, then orange swirl on the top edge of the cake. Repeat this until the entire top edge of the cake is covered in swirls.
26. Place a candy corn in the middle of each frosting swirl.
27. Pour your Halloween sprinkles in the center of the top of the cake and spread around covering the entire top.
28. Cut into 16 slices and enjoy!

Notes

A Hezzi-D Original recipe

Recommended Products

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  OXO 1107600 Good Grips 3-Piece Stainless-Steel Mixing Bowl Set, White
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  Wilton Performance Aluminum Pan 8-Inch Round Cake Pans, Set of 2

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