Candy Barrel Cake

I've seen this type of cake on many websites and was happy to finally make one. It's supposed to look like a barrel of candy. I made it for my sister's birthday party yesterday. She's been craving brownies so I used brownies for this "cake."

I haven't been able to make brownies from scratch that taste as good as this one. It's my absolute favorite brownie. I always buy the box from Costco because it make SIX batches. oh, I love brownies!

I needed to use less batter in the 8 inch pans because I wanted my 2 layer brownie cake to be shorter than the Kit Kat bars. So I thought I would take out some batter and make a tiny candy barrel cake also. I used two bags of brownie mix and took out 1/3 cup of the batter for each of my 4 inch pans. Unfortunately I ran out of candy after making the big cake, so my husband gladly ate the brownies meant for the tiny cake.

I had M&M's left over from Easter. I thought I had enough to cover the top of the cake to give it the illusion of it being a barrel full of M&M's, but I did not. I did not feel like making a trip to the store just to buy more. I had to use some mini M&M's and some peanut M&M's, which I already had, to fill in the holes. But I wish i had another handful or so of M&M's because the top still wasn't completely covered.

I put a thin layer of icing in between the 2 layers and around the cake. I tried to make it as thin as possible because the brownies are really rich and sweet. But you can't skip the icing, it's needed to hold the candies in place.

here's a little animated gif I made of me putting the candies on. This was a fun cake to make. next time i think i'll make a few tiny ones with my 4 inch pans.