Pineapple Cake – Extravagant Kid’s Birthday Cake
This pineapple cake is proof that my crazy desire to make extravagant cakes for my kids’ birthdays will not be ending soon. This post is little late as the birthday party was in December last year however, better late than never!
Unsurprisingly, when it came to dreaming up this creation, inspiration was drawn from my 2 year old son’s favorite fruit…pineapple. He absolutely loves pineapple. Ask him what he wants for dessert and he will say “pineapple” in English, Cantonese and Sign Language (NZSL) just to make sure he gets the message across!
As all of our family live in different towns and cities to us with many congregated in the lower north island of New Zealand, we decided to have his birthday party at Nana’s house in Upper Hutt. Given this is a 5 hour drive from where we actually live, this added much more chaos to my already self-made chaotic situation of deciding to go through with making a realistic looking pineapple cake.
To make this cake I decided to make pineapple flavoured cake as well as edible leaves and a gluten free, dairy free pineapple cake base to cater for the guests with allergy and/or intolerances to such substances.
If you are wondering why there are toy dinosaurs in the pineapple leaves of the cake, it’s because my son also had a fascination with dinosaurs, so much so he would stomp around the house saying “dinosaur, rarrrr!” making sure he completed the act with short arms and glaring teeth. Thus, his birthday present was a set of dinosaur toys, some of which I decided to mingle in amongst the leaves of the pineapple cake as an added little embellishment surprise for him.
Pineapple Cake Assembly
To assemble the pineapple portion of this pineapple cake, make the pineapple cake recipe provided below and make a a batch of buttercream, I like to use a ratio of 1:1 butter:icing sugar mixture for my butter cream. I generally make it in batches of 100g butter and 100g icing sugar, which I find is an easy to work with amount both to handle to make extra if required.
Cut the tops off three of the four mini cakes made, then layer them on top of each other with buttercream in between each layer; making sure the uncut mini cake sits on top. You can cut the top off this one too but I liked the idea of having a rounded top.
Trim the edges if they are little crisp, then crumb coat with a light coating of butter cream.
Place in the fridge to set for at least 30 minutes.
Making the Pineapple Leaves
Whilst the crumb coat is setting, I made the leaves for the pineapple cake.
Here I used edible paper, wire and water. I cut the edible paper into rectangles of approximately the same size then sandwiched the wire in between two rectangles using water as glue to stick them together.Make sure you leave a tail of wire long enough to poke into the cake to hold the leaf in place when it comes to cake assembly.
Once they were dry, I used scissors to cut them into leaf shapes
Using a palette of dark green and Brown gel food colouring mixed with vodka, I roughly painted the leaves before putting them aside until required.
Fondant Shaping and Styling
Take the pineapple cake out of the fridge.
Roll out yellow fondant and cut circles out of it using a steel shape cutter about 15mm diameter. Cut many of these, as they will be used to cover the entire outside of the pineapple.
Using a crimping tool, press down the edges of a fondant circle and shape into an approximate hexagon. Press onto the side of the cake. Repeat until the entire cake is covered ensuring the fondant pieces are butted up against each other.
Use a pair of sharp scissor to cut a spikey point coming out of each segment.
Mix dark green gel food colouring with vodka to make a thin paint and use it to paint inside the crevices and around each segment.
Mix brown gel food colouring and vodka to make a thin paint and use it add patches of brown all over the pineapple to give it a more realistic look.
To help with holding the leaves in place and give the toy dinosaurs something to plant their feet into, I mounted a discs of yellow fondant on top of the pineapple and painted it with leftover green and brown food colouring paint.
Final Cake Assembly
To assemble the final masterpiece, place the pineapple cake on top of the allergy friendly pineapple cake base (recipe for that is below too).
Set the dinosaurs into the top of the cake.
Poke leaves into the top of the pineapple cake and around the dinosaur toys. Bend the wire to curve the the leaves so they look a little floppy whilst fanning out of the top of the pineapple.
And it’s all done enjoy!
Mel Crafting.
Pineapple Cake for the Pineapple
Serves 16
Ingredients:
330g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 can (425g) crushed pineapple
120g unsalted butter
100g sugar
1 tsp lemon zest
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
Method:
Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together into a bowl.
Cream the butter, sugar and lemon zest together until light and fluffy
Beat eggs into the mixture one at a time; add the vanilla essence.
Add the dry ingredients alternately with the crushed pineapple.
Divide mixture evenly between 4 well greased mini springform pans.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees celcius for 35-40 minutes or until lightly browned on the top and a skewer comes out clean.
Allergy Friendly Pineapple Cake for the Base
Serves 12
Ingredients:
1 packet Orgram vanilla cake mix
1 can crushed pineapple
80g dairyfree margarine
2 eggs
Method:
Combine all ingredients into a stand mixer, mix as per box instructions.
Bake in a square cake tin at baking temperature and time as per box instructions.
Using 1:1 margarine:icing sugar buttercream mixture with green food colouring mixed in. Use a grass tip to pipe buttercream all over the cake to make it look like grass.
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