Animal Cracker Cake
How cute are animal crackers? vanilla cookies with lots of sprinkles? Yes, please! My gorgeous strawberry vanilla cake is inspired by the cute little animal crackers. And those truffles on top? So easy to make and so delicious! Perfect fun baking project!
Nick’s favorite thing…
I absolutely adore how fun and cute this cake is. I happened to have discovered what animal crackers were, the cute little animal-shaped crackers with pink icing and sprinkles and I thought that would be wonderful to base a cake on! Great for birthdays, great for baby showers, great for any occasion!
What does strawberry vanilla cake taste like?
This cake is made up of my vanilla cake recipe, which is moist and really yummy. The frosting is strawberry flavored and made of my Smooth and silky Swiss meringue buttercream. The sprinkle-covered cake balls on top and a visual treat and overall, this cake is a delicious celebration of vanilla cake.
What are the ingredients I need for the strawberry vanilla cake?
All-purpose flour – also known as plain flour.
Caster sugar – also known as superfine sugar.
Salt – I used fine salt.
Unsalted butter – make sure your butter is softened.
Eggs – I used large eggs.
Milk – I used cow’s milk but almond milk will also work.
Vegetable oil – you can also use sunflower oil.
Greek yogurt – you may use sour cream instead if you wish.
Vanilla Extract – Always use good quality vanilla extract when baking, it makes a huge difference. I have a great recipe here for it if you’d like to try your own!
Food gel – I used the chefmaster brand.
Strawberry flavoring. I used the Roberts brand.
Rainbow Sprinkles – If you want to try making your own, check out my easy to make sprinkle recipe here!
White chocolate – I used the Nestle cooking buttons.
Pink candy melts – I used the Wilton brand.
Animal cracker sprinkles – from fancysprinkles.com
Heavy cream – this is the type of cream you use for whipping.
Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting – Super smooth and totally delicious. Perfect for shiny, sharp cake edges! Grab the recipe here!
My Top Tips!
- This is not a difficult cake to make but it aint quick either. I would recommend breaking it up into 3 days. Bake the cake on day one, crumb coat the cake and make the cake pops on day two, and finish decorating either on day 2 or day three.
Other Funfetti Recipes You Might Like!
- Funfetti Brownie And Cookie Dough Cake – it’s in the name! A deliciously fudgy cake!
- Funfetti Cookie Dough Truffles – a great alternative to the cake pops on top.
- Classic Vanilla Funfetti Cake – so perfect for fun birthdays.
- Funfetti Cupcakes – fun birthdays in cupcake form!
- Lofthouse cookies – easy and delicious sprinkle cookies!
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I hope you guys enjoyed this simple but delicious strawberry vanilla cake recipe with me. Please comment in the comments section below, or feel free to share with your family and friends on social media.
I’ll see you all on the following recipe. Happy baking!
N x
Animal Cracker Cake
Serves 30
Ingredients
Cake
- 3 1/2 cups / 430 g all-purpose flour
- 1 1/4 cups / 265 g caster sugar
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup / 125 g unsalted butter
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/2 cups / 375 ml milk
- 1/2 cup / 125 ml vegetable oil, or sunflower oil
- 2 tbsp Greek yogurt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 10 drops pink food gel
- 2 tsp strawberry flavoring
- 1 cup / 200 g funfetti sprinkles
Animal Crackers
- 1 1/2 cups / 360 g white chocolate, melted
- 1 1/2 cups / 360 g pink candy melts, melted
- 1 cup / 200 g rainbow caviar sprinkles
Decorations
- 1 cup / 200 g Animal Cracker sprinkles or similar
White chocolate drizzle
- 1/2 cup / 100 g white chocolate
- 1/4 cup / 60 ml heavy cream
Frosting
- 2 1/2 batches American buttercream frosting
- 1 tsp strawberry flavoring
- 4 drops pink food gel
Learn How To Make it! [VIDEO]
Instructions
Frosting
- Split the frosting into two bowls. Colour one using pink food gel and strawberry flavouring, leave the other one white.
Cake
- Please note: to make the 6 layered cake in this recipe + the cake pops on top of the cake, you’ll need to make 3 batches of vanilla cake. All other recipes and measurements are enough to put the cake together and decorate it.Preheat a fan-forced oven to 140C (280F) or 160C (320F) for a conventional oven. Spray three 8” cake tins with oil spray and line the bottom with baking paper. Spray and line a rectangular baking tray with oil spray and baking paper. Set aside
- Add the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to a large mixing bowl and mix together using a hand mixer until well combined.
- Next add the softened butter and mix on low speed until mixture reaches a crumbly sand like texture.
- Add the eggs, milk, oil, strawberry flavouring, pink food gel, Greek yogurt and vanilla extract. Mix on low speed until no dry ingredients are showing. Scrape down the bowl and mix for another 20 seconds.
- Add 1/3 of the batter into the baking tray. Split the remaining batter amongst the three 8” cake tins. I find using an ice cream scoop to help me do this makes it easy to distribute the batter evenly so that everything bakes at the same time. Add funfetti sprinkles on top and mix into the batter using a spoon.
- Bake all of the cakes for 50-60 min or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. If the pick comes out with wet batter, bake for a further 10 min at a time until fully baked. Allow the cakes to cool to room temperature inside the cake tins and then chill them in the fridge overnight. Chilling your cakes overnight makes them easier to trim and decorate. So, I bake my cakes the day before I decorate them.
Cake Pops
- Crumble the sheet cake into a large mixing bowl. The finer the crumbs,the better. Add about 1 cup of frosting into the bowl and use a wooden spoon to mix until well combined.
- To make the cake pops perfectly round you’ll need a round sphere mold. I used a 1-inch silicone half sphere mold with 15 cavities. Fill the mold with the cake pop mixture. Once filled, place in the freezer to chill for 20minutes.
- Once chilled really well, place a cake pop stick into one half of the cake pops. You’ll be making two different coloured cake pops. Pink ones and white ones. For the white cake pops, dip the cake pop halves in white chocolate. For the pink ones, use pink chocolate.
- Allow excess chocolate to drip off before adding another cake pop half on top using the melted chocolate as glue.
- Place the glued together cake pops onto a baking tray and chill in the fridge for 20 minutes. You’ll need 8 pink coated cake and 8 white chocolate coated cake pops.
- Once chilled coat the cake pops in their assigned chocolate and sprinkle with rainbow caviar sprinkles. Once completed, place on a baking tray lined with baking paper and set aside in the fridge to chill until ready to use.
To Fill And Crumb Coat Cake
- To trim your chilled cakes, use a cake leveller or large serrated knife to carefully trim the crust off the top of each cake before you trim each cake in half. You’ll end up with 6 layers of cake.
- To crumb coat your cake, add a dab of frosting onto an 8” cake board or flat serving plate. Use a small offset spatula to spread the frosting around before adding the first cake layer. Gently press down the centre of the cake layer to make sure it’s stuck to the frosting underneath.
- Add white frosting to a piping bag and frost a ring around the top of the cake. Fill the centre with more frosting. Use your small offset spatula to smoothen out the frosting before you add the next layer of cake. Repeat with the remaining layers.
- Add more frosting around and top and sides of the cake. Use the small spatula to smoothen out the top and sides of the cake, taking care to fill in any gaps in between each layer of cake.
- Use a cake scraper (otherwise known as a bench scraper) to smoothen out the frosting on the sides and top. Get it as neat as you can. This should just be a neat, thin layer of frosting which is aimed at trapping any cake crumbs so that random bits of cake crumbs don’t show up on the final layer of frosting.Chill for 2 hours or overnight.
White chocolate drizzle
- Add the white chocolate and cream into a large microwave safe bowl. Microwave for 20 seconds at a time, mixing each time until smooth.
- Use a small offset spatula to smoothen out the top of the cake. Don’t worry about getting it perfect because we’re going to come back and smoothen it out properly.
- Use the cake scraper to smoothen out the sides of the cake. Add sprinkles to the cake by beginning at the bottom of the cake and adding less as you go up. This will help give you a sprinkles ombré effect.
- Drizzle the top of the cake with the white chocolate drizzle.
- To prepare the swirls of frosting that go on top of the cake, lay out a large piece of plastic wrap on your workbench. Add white frosting to a piping bag and pink frosting to another bag. Pipe lines of frosting on the plastic sheet alternating between each colour. Wrap the frosting up into a log and twist each end of the log. Snip one end off using scissors. Place into a piping bag fitted with an open star tip and pipe swirls of frosting on top of the cake.
- Finish the cake off by adding the cake balls on top. If your swirl frosting is too soft to support the cake balls which can be a bit heavy, place it in the fridge for 30 minutes before placing on top of the cake.
Notes
Nutrition
4 comments
Amizing, thanks!
But I just want to ask, there is an alternative for buttercream?
Hi Hany! Absofruitly! You can Swiss Meringue Buttercream or my famous Cream Cheese Frosting! Both on the site if you search for them! N x
Hi Nick,
This cake recipe looks similar to the vanilla cake recipe in your SUGAR REBELS Pipe for Your Life cookbook (which is great by the way!). Both this recipe and the vanilla cake recipe from your book say to bake in 3 – 8 inch cake pans. I want to use this recipe for a 9 inch pan. Either 2 or 3 layers. How can I adjust the recipe to work, or do you have a good dense cake recipe for a 9 inch cake pan?
I would make 4 batches if you’re making three 9″ cake tins 🙂 N x