So remember when I made the three-tiered Pawprint Cake for my daughter’s birthday? At the time I wasn’t sure quite how much cake I would need in each color, so I ended up with extra layers– one 6″ layer and one loaf pan’s worth of pink cake, to be exact. I wrapped them in foil, froze them, and figured I’d find some other use for them eventually. That “eventually” arrived this weekend, when after buying several multi-packs of Pocky in various flavors to use for Valentine’s Day gifts for the kindergarten class, the teacher emailed everyone asking that we not give edible items for the occasion. (sigh)
Great, what was I supposed to do with 20+ packs of Pocky? Other than eat them, of course? But then it occurred to me that I had Pocky, I had cake, and I had Valentine’s Day coming up– of course I could put them all together to make a fabulous dessert!
Pinterest was crowded with images of adorable cakes encircled with stockades of Pocky, and I immediately fell in love with the idea. One problem, though, was that I only had one round layer and one loaf cake– and my loaf cake wasn’t quite big enough to eke out enough pieces to make a presentable second round layer. One layer wasn’t nearly tall enough for a pretty cake, so I decided that I could bake two more round layers for a three-layer cake, and use the loaf cake to make cake balls for decoration.
But wait, you may be thinking– wasn’t the whole point of this exercise to use up excess cake rather than generate more cake? Well, yes, but practicality has never been my strong suit in terms of baking. Accordingly, I baked two more 6″ layers of chocolate cake (halving the linked recipe) and started looking through my kitchen for frosting/filling ideas.
I dug out a can of vanilla frosting left over from my birthday cupcake extravaganza, along with the remains of a jar of marshmallow Fluff. When mixed together they were still pretty sweet, so I beat in half a stick of softened butter, and folded in a cup of unsweetened whipped cream. Really, at this point I was just throwing together items that I thought would work– the result wasn’t my favorite frosting in the world, but it was passably tasty, and I had enough extra that I froze the remains in silicone mini-muffin pans to see if they’d make decent frozen treats. (spoiler: they did)
Anyway, I assembled my cake layers, my frosting, and a box of strawberries I’d picked up to cut the sweetness of the dessert, and started putting things together. I’d intended to put the pink cake layer in between the two chocolate layers, but as soon as I’d stacked my first two layers I realized that three layers would be far too tall– much taller than my Pocky sticks! (glad I thought to check!) So I just frosted the two layers and called it a day.
While I let the cake chill, I crumbled up the loaf cake with some of the plain canned frosting and shaped it into balls, which I dipped into melted chocolate and white candy melts. I also dipped some strawberries for more decoration, and put everything in the fridge to set.
Out came the cake, which had chilled just enough that I could press the Pocky sticks around the outside and have them stick nicely. Now, here’s the answer to the question you’ve been waiting for– how many Pocky sticks did it take to go around the cake?
Well, each multi-pack came with 9 individual packs of Pocky, each of which had 7 sticks. To go around my 6″ cake, I used 9 packs of chocolate Pocky and 7 packs of strawberry Pocky (with a few casualties that were broken when I opened the packs), so approximately 110 sticks. I decided to go with a striped pattern just to keep things interesting.
When I’d finished building my Pocky palisade, I piled the top of the cake with cake balls and chocolate-covered strawberries, and it made for one of the prettiest cakes I’ve ever decorated! I couldn’t help setting it up on my daughter’s play kitchen for photos– the color scheme and sheer cuteness of both items just begged to be combined!
I seriously love this cake… so darned adorable!
It's All Frosting... 