My daughter’s birthday is a week after Halloween. And since she was four, I have used leftover Halloween candy to decorate her birthday cake. The idea didn’t come from something cute I saw on social media; it was purely out of desperation because I’m terrible at decorating cakes.
I’m a pretty good cook, if I do say so myself, but baking? It’s too finicky for me. All my cakes have issues — uneven layers, icing too soft, the cake crumbs clumping into the frosting. I’ve tried and I’ve practiced and I’ve made a lot of cakes in an attempt to improve, but I just can’t master the art of cake decorating. And it’s extra frustrating because I love the taste of a homemade cake and refuse to buy store-bought ones.
Until I hit on the idea of using the Halloween candy.
On the afternoon of her fourth birthday, I needed to get the cake done and decorated in less than an hour for her birthday party. It was vanilla cake with bubblegum pink frosting and it looked sad and homely. It was uneven, and I didn’t have quite enough frosting to cover it and I had run out of ingredients to make more.
Next to me on the counter was a bucket of leftover candy from Halloween and a bag of penny candy she was sent for her birthday. Candy and cake, maybe that would work? I started adding gummy worms, twirling them around the cake, Skittles, and Smarties and other penny candies and the cake started to come together. The colors were whimsical, making it look like an abstract painting. It was a little kooky, a little kitsch. I patted myself on the back because I’d a solution that was clever, and low-waste but also fun. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to eat it, but how bad could it be?
When I brought out the cake, the kids’ faces lit up. The parents in attendance kind of looked at me like, “Really, more candy?” But those naysayers be damned, because once we sliced into that sucker, we all realized candy and cake were a perfect combination. Sure, it was sweet but the chewiness of the gummies added texture to the fluffiness of the cake. And you really haven’t lived until you’ve tasted a Swedish fish swimming in birthday cake frosting.
In the years since, we have switched to making sheet-layer-style cakes, where I let both kids decorate the cake themselves using their leftover Halloween candy.
A sheet cake, by the way, is my second hack to make this whole birthday cake stuff easier. I use these Nordic Ware half sheets. Trying to bake two perfectly level round cakes is hard for someone who doesn’t bake a lot. Yes, I’ve seen the hacks of using dental floss to make even cake layers but the trick has never worked for me. A half sheet tray is foolproof and each slice of cake is less cake. To be honest: I’m not big cake fan, anyway, and a giant two-layer slice is just too much cake and icing. I love a single layer square with a cup of coffee. It’s just the right amount of both. For my own birthday in December, I like to make Gramercy Tavern’s gingerbread cake in a bundt pan (also foolproof), dusted with powdered sugar.
The kids like to add rows of Skittles around edges and designs using Kit Kat bars and crumbles of assorted other candy bars. It’s total chaos, but it’s a tradition we now look forward to each year. I’ve noticed as the years have gone on we prefer birthday cakes that are more sugar-forward than chocolate. The sweetness of a cake really lends itself well to the tartness of Nerds and Sweet Tarts. And I have noticed my kids prefer gummy candies over chocolate during the rest of the year, a theme that seems pretty consistent with Gen Z.
And I don’t ever feel her birthday cake is the scraps of Halloween. And she doesn’t, either. This year, for my daughter’s 12th birthday, I asked her if she was ready to move on from the candy cake tradition, and she replied with a big NO. “I don’t really like cake but I love candy.” Well, there you go.
Katy Elliott is the Personal Stories Editor at Scary Mommy. She loves to cook, garden, and chat with people about anything from how much you love your kids to how much your kids drive you up the wall. She’s a mom to two kids and lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
