Zaylee's Birthday Cake

Last night we had the birthday party for Zaylee. Since Jeff and I bought her Candy Land for her gift, I thought a Candy Land Cake would be appropriate.

To make this cake I used:
1 box strawberry cake mix
1 batch Decorator Frosting (recipe below)
Air Heads
Peppermints
Gumdrops (large and small)
Small licorice pieces
Nutter Butter Bites
Lollipops
Chocolate chips
Colorful ice cream cones
Sprinkles
Green sugar crystals
Candy Land game to use as pattern


To save money, I purchased most of these items in the bulk foods section at Win-Co. We only got a little bit of each, and spent just pennies on each item!

I started with a boxed cake mix, strawberry flavor. Zaylee is a girly-girl and wanted a pink cake! I baked the cake in a 10x15 pan so I could have a larger surface to work with. Most Candy Land cakes I've seen use a double 9x13, but I didn't want that large of a cake. So I did one box of mix in the larger pan, and reduced the baking time. It took about 25 minutes.

Once the cake cooled, I frosted it with this frosting recipe. I really liked this frosting, because it ended up tasting very much like bakery frosting. The key was using shortening instead of butter, and beating it for a very long time.

Decorator Frosting
6 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup shortening
6 tbsp. milk
2 tsp. vanilla

Beat until fluffy. I used my mom's stand mixer and just let it go for several minutes, scraping down the sides occasionally. I did have to add an additional 2 tbsp. milk because Idaho is dry and everything requires additional liquid. The frosting was fluffy, thick, and beautifully white!

Frost the cake, reserving a cup or two of frosting.

Trace path on cake with toothpick. Cut Air Heads into six squares each to use as path pieces, and lay along the path traced. Use Airheads cut into strips for the Rainbow Trail, and another Air Head, lined with gumdrops, for Gumdrop Pass.

For Candy Castle, press ice cream cones upside down into the frosting, and decorate with some of reserved frosting and sprinkles.

Snow Flake Lake is made with big globs of reserved frosting, piped from a baggie with a large hole cut in the corner. For Chocolate Swamp, mix some cocoa into the rest of the frosting and pipe large globs. Top with chocolate chips. I'm glad they changed Molasses Swamp to Chocolate Swamp - it would have been much more difficult to come up with a way to incorporate molasses onto this cake!

Pipe a small amount of the chocolate frosting into the arrow at the start of the path.

Use the remaining candies to make Peppermint Forest, Gumdrop Mountains, Licorice Forest, Peanut Acres, and Lollipop Woods, using board game as a guide. There is also a Gingerbread Tree on our game, but I didn't have space to put that on the cake.


Zaylee enjoyed her cake very much! Who wouldn't?