How to Make a Surprise Inside Cake

Just a quick tutorial on how I made my “surprise” inside 1D (that’s One Direction for all of you non-tween girls out there) birthday cake for my daughter.

An excellent step-by-step can be found here by Beth from Hungry Happenings. LOVE her creations and this post she wrote is what I followed to make this cake.

First (and I don’t have a photo of this step) we cut out the number “1” and the letter “D” out of Sara Lee Pound cake (found in your freezer aisle). I took the lazy/resourceful route. I knew I didn’t have time to make my own pound cake. The inside “surprise” needs to be made out of a dense cake to hold its shape. So I cut a family size Sara Lee Pound cake horizontally into 3 layers. I then laid my cookie cutter onto the cake and cut out the designs. This method is very similar to cutting out cookie dough.

Keep the pound cake frozen until you need it so that it is easier to cut out the designs. I was able to get 15 “1s” and 15 “Ds” out of the one pound cake using 1.5” cookie cutters which was just enough to fit inside my loaf pan end to end. Depending on the size of your cookie cutter, you may get more or less.

Once I had the “surprises” cut out, I put them back into the freezer until I was ready to assemble.

Next, I made the cake batter. To make the white cake a contrasting color against the “white” 1D, I just added teal gel paste coloring to the batter.

I then prepped my pan. I used a loaf pan and sprayed it well with Pam. A layer of cake batter comes next. Put down enough so that the bottom of the pan is fully covered and so the “surprise” will stick into the batter. Once that is done, fill up a pastry bag or a Ziploc bag with the cake batter. Believe me when I say it will be much easier to get the batter where it needs to go if you use this method.

Now we are ready to assemble the inside. Take your “surprises” out of the freezer and line them up where you want them to go. This is where I had a little bit of a hard time keeping them straight and as even as possible. I’m sure with practice it would get easier.

If your shapes have a hole in the middle, put in a few at a time and pipe in some cake batter into the hole so that it fills up. Do this until all of your shapes are in your pan.

Take the pastry bag and pipe in the rest of the cake batter making sure the sides and the tops of the “surprises” are covered.

You should be all set with one more VERY important tip. Make sure you know which way is the front of your cake so that when you cut into it, you get the front of the design rather than the back.

Bake at 350 degrees for at least 40 minutes, possibly longer. It took my loaf pan cake to bake 45 minutes. Keep testing the middle of the cake. Once your tester comes out clean, your cake is done. Let cool about 10 minutes in the pan and then flip out (still remembering which way is the front) and turn right side up to cool completely.

Then decorate as you wish. Luckily my daughter wanted an easy design since we took so much time preparing the inside of the cake. And for the most part, she decorated it herself. Gotta love that!

I’ve always thought these types of cakes were pretty cool and I can’t wait to try it again and the number of surprises are endless with all of the cookie cutters I own.  What would you put inside of your first surprise cake?