Happy 3rd Birthday to my niece!

I made her a pull apart cake (AKA cupcake cakes) of Mickey Mouse. I was really excited to make it for her.  This is my second pull-apart cake and I have learned a couple of tricks along the way.  

So what is a pull-apart cake?  It is a cake, but made with cupcakes.  It’s the best kind of cake for a kids party or really any event. Why is it so great?  You don’t have to dirty any forks or plates – just use napkins.  You do not have to cut the cake – just grab a cupcake and pull.  Kids and adults both love pulling there own “piece” of cake away.  Do make sure you have napkins as it can get a wee bit messy.

It is a cake, but made with cupcakes.  All you do is bake cupcakes and put them in the desired shape.  Then ice over all of the cupcakes in however way you would like.

Here are a couple tips and tricks:

1. You might find that you have gaps between your cupcakes.  Try to put them as tightly together as you can.  If there is still gaps, fill them in with the heal of a loaf of bread (no one eats that piece anyways).  Ice right over top and no one will notice … well not until they find the bread after pulling it away and are like “What the heck!?”  But that doesn’t really matter.  It will help make your cake look great.  I wish I knew that trick for the football.

2.  Once you make your shape put a dab of icing on the bottom of each cupcake on theperimeter of the cake (or all of the cupcakes).  This will help keep the cupcakes in place, especially if you need to travel with it.  I did this for the Mickey Mouse cake, but only did the outside of the shape.  It did the job very well.  You can tell where I did this on the picture to the right.

3.  When colouring your frosting, use Wilton or some other brand of colour.  This was my first time using it and it was so much better then using regular food colouring.  The colour is more vivid.  I had to use regular food colouring for the tongue and it turned more pink then red.

For the Mickey Mouse pull-apart cake I used copper colouring (by Wilton) for his face and black colouring (by Wilton) for his nose, ears, and eyes.  It took a lot of black colour, but I found that it got darker as it sat in the icing.  I used icing from a can, but you can make your own icing.  I put a layer of the copper icing just past where I knew I would start the black of his head and ears.  I then outlined the shape for the black of his head, his eyes, nose, and mouth.  I filled in the black of his head with a spreading knife.  I filled in his eyes and nose with the skinny round end to a icing dispenser (I need to learn the proper terms!).  I also used this tool to fill in the rest of his eyes with white frosting and his tongue with pink/red frosting (which I made from red food colouring).

Here is my first attempt:

Have you had a pull-apart cake before?  If I was going to make a pull-apart cake for you what would you want it to be?