Kit Kat Kake

Like I said in my previous post, my husband loves anything with peanut butter. So for his birthday in January, I wanted to do something "different" then a regular cake he would expect. I randomly found some pictures of a Kit Kat cake when I was searching online for "Man Cakes" (This was a visually interesting search, BTW!) and found it. I thought it would be a perfect choice for him, and I knew I could incorporate the peanut butter somehow!!

There is, as always, two ways to do this cake:

The Easy Way
The Suzy Homemaker Way

For this particular cake, I went the SHW, and baked my own cake (my version of "funfetti") and made my own buttercream icing. Because I wasn't doing any icing work, I kept the consistency pretty sturdy because I was going to be attaching these Kit Kats.

For the Easy Way, purchase your premade and pre-iced cake from your favorite retailer or grocery store.

Tools/Ingredients:

• Cake (if baked or bought)
• Icing (if home made, bought, or pre-iced)
• 10 packs minimum of REGULAR sized Kit Kat Bars - each package contains 4 bars, This cake (9inch) took 40 bars. I would buy a few extra packs just in case some break or you eat some as you go (I could not resist, personally!)
• ***NOTE - put these in the freezer for an hour or so before you use them - they melt pretty quickly, and this will prevent fingerprints in the chocolate
• 1-2 LARGE bags of "topping"
• In this case, I used Peanut Butter M&Ms - however, you can use crushed Oreos, jelly beans, Coconut, fruit etc etc...the possibilities are endless!!
• A cake topper if you want one - I purchased this one at the dollar store, although it is supposed to be a table topper, it worked just as well for the cake.
• Ribbon of any color or to coordinate with your topping

1. 1. Put together your cake (if its the SHW), ice between layers and all sides - your frosting does not need to be perfect, because the Kit Kats will cover it
2. Break open your Kit Kat bars, a few at a time, and leave the rest in the freezer while you work. I broke my bars down to have 2 pieces of 2 bars (this helps with the rounding)
3. Starting wherever you want, gently press the bars into the frosting, making sure that the bars are touching your base (cake plate, cake stand, box - whatever) to keep it nice and neat. a two stack should give you about an inch-ish or so above the cake (where your topping will go)
4. Tie your ribbon however you want, making the bow where you want your "front" to be.
5. Open up your topping and start filling in the top of the cake where the Kit Kats are standing up. (if you are using a topper, put this on first and pile on top). For my cake, I also placed some around the corners of my square cake stand.
6. Ta-Da! Your Kit Kat Kake is done!

I co-conspired with my sister in law and mother in law to show up at hubby's work, and took the cake to share. This cake is VERY sweet and really is only good in small amounts. The two bar Kit Kats around the edge was great for a cutting guide. However, you can probably mix up some flavors to create a sweet and savory cake if you found a good combo.