Get Your Child’s Creativity Flowing with Valentine’s Day Smash Cakes!

Chocolate smash cakes – also known as pinata cakes, since they’re stuffed with candy – are the newest hot craze to hit homes since the Hot Chocolate Bomb. The great news is that if you read our post about making Hot Chocolate Bombs, you’ve got a great handle on making your own smash cakes too. These Pinata Smash Cakes are a shell of molded melted chocolate, and making and decorating them is a great opportunity to have some creative kitchen time for Valentine’s Day and Family Day.

Ready to get started? Here’s what you need:

·        A food-safe silicon mold like this OR a medium-size plastic bowl (greased with cooking spray)

·        At least 12-16 oz of dark chocolate for the shell (a little extra is a good idea for patching or adhesive for decorations)

·        Candy (for the inside!)

·        Candy melts, sprinkles, small candy like Smarties or hearts, etc. to decorate the outside with.

To get some ideas about what you might need or want to decorate your smash cake, we recommend checking out some of smash cakes others have made on Instagram and Pinterest! There’s some really fun and creative ideas.

Directions

Be sure to melt your chocolate slowly in the microwave so it doesn’t scorch. And when it’s fully melted, use the chocolate to paint the inside of your food mold. Once you’ve finished, be sure to chill your mold in the fridge for at least 20 minutes to give it time to set.

Once the inside of the mold is firmly set, now’s the time to stuff it full of candy, since it will be hard to do once it’s sitting on the plate! Set a large plate or platter (gently!) over the top of the mold. If your mold is silicon, hold the plate with your fingers to keep the weight of the plate from crushing your hard work, and then carefully turn the mold and plate over.

With the plate sitting on a flat table, gently dislodge your chocolate shape.

That step can be a little bit delicate. The good news is that it’s not the end of the world if you have a premature break. For small cracks, you can patch them with more melted chocolate. For major breaks, just salvage your chocolate and return it to the microwave to try again.

Ready to get to the fun part? Okay!

Now it’s time to make your smash cake a work of art. You can use drops of melted chocolate or candy melts like adhesive for pieces of candy, or you can melt your candy melts and use them like paints on the surface of the chocolate!

There’s no wrong ways to do this part, so let your creative juices flow. Just remember to be gentle with the chocolate shell. We hope your family has a ‘smashing’ good time with this activity!

…And remember, if you’ve got extras items left over from decorating, making the hot chocolate bombs is a perfectly great way to use them up.