Tie Dye Surprise Cake

What's better than making a birthday cake for the most excellent eleven year old girl?  Helping that eleven year old make her OWN birthday cake!  Seriously, I never had this much fun when I make a cake all by myself in the kitchen. 

The top of this cake is the tie dye cake that was featured on yesterday's blog post.  The bottom of the cake is a surprise cake with hidden tie dye stars in the center.

This was my first attempt at trying to bake a shape inside of another cake so I wasn't quite sure how it would turn out but fortunately for me (and the birthday girl) it was a huge success.

I started with an extra tye dye cake that the girls and I had baked the night before.  (Thanks to an unexpected thunderstorm that cancelled their pool plans.)  I used a star cookie cutter to cut shapes the cake into mini stars.

I placed my stars on a cooling rack and put them into the freezer for an hour.

And the best part about cutting cake shapes - are the SCRAPS.   Yum!

Once the stars were firm, we arranged them into a ring inside a 10 inch round cake pan.

Then I made more cake batter (the same recipe that I used for the tie dye cake) and poured it around, inside and behind the star ring.  It was a bit messy - but it turns out - it didn't even matter.

My 10 inch cake baked for 45 minutes!  That seemed like a REALLY long time to bake a cake but it just wasn't getting done in the center.

Cool 10 minutes in the pan and then invert onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

You've got to admit - that's a pretty cool slice of cake.  (Sorry about the blurry photo.)

The birthday girl decorated her own cake with sprinkles and candy and vanilla buttercream.

 

Happy Birthday!!!

Ciao!