Surprise! The inside was filled with chocolate chips, M&Ms (surprisingly not a good choice if you are going to refrigerate the cake; the candy shell loses its crunch), funfetti chips (sickeningly sweet, but cute), and sprinkles. Of course, it was only a 6" cake, so the amount of filling was kind of negligible, and it didn't actually spill out when he cut into the cake. Hallie and I were acting so weird (we were both in the know) that he asked if there was a joke he was missing. We just encouraged him to cut a second piece, and that's when he saw the center.
The piñata cake is quite easy to assemble. This cake was four layers, so I had one solid layer on the top and one on the bottom, but I think the bottom is optional - if you only had a 3-layer cake, you could certainly make holes in the bottom two and just leave the top one whole. I used a biscuit cutter with a handle to cut out identical circles from the center of the cake. (Those will make nice cake pops mixed with leftover frosting). I frosted and stacked the bottom three layers, lining up the center holes. Then I spooned the candy mixture into the center and covered it with the top layer. I crumb coated, frosted, and decorated as usual.
With a larger cake, you could probably cut a larger hole, and it would be fun to have more filling. But with a 6" cake, I wanted to make sure there was still some cake left. My biscuit cutter was just 2" in diameter. I did like using a biscuit (or cookie) cutter to ensure the circle cutout was exact and lined up nicely, but in a pinch you could absolutely just use a skinny knife to cut out a circle. Just make sure the hole is nicely centered and the layers line up!
This was a fun time to test out something cute that I've been wanting to try. My friend, Suzanne, made one for her daughter's sweet 16 in August, and that was what inspired me this week!
* I do know how to spell piñata, but it is not searchable with the tilde, so I purposely misspelled it!
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