Pigs in the Mud Cake Recipe

It's Valentine's Day today and what better way to celebrate than with my daughter turning 2?  Ok she doesn't turn 2 for a few more days still but it's nice to have daddy at home on the weekend especially for a special celebration!

For my son's 2nd birthday, I made Smitten Kitchen's monkey cake (he is truly a little monkey - always on the move, always being silly, always jumping or climbing on top of things.  And he likes bananas.  I'm just saying...). 

For my daughter, I have had my eye on the Pigs in the Mud cake for a while now. And aptly, she is my little piggy. In the cutest and most loving way imaginable. She loves to eat. I always say "Where there's food, there's Eva!"  She doesn't mind making a mess when it comes to food. Or anything for that matter. And she hates cleaning up!  My son is the neat freak. At almost-four, he takes pride in making his bed in the mornings. 

Back to The Pig Cake. The simplest way to break it down is probably to outline the steps I took in order, then share the recipes I used. In my usual style, I collected info from several parts of the Internet to make sure I was on track. 

BASIC STEPS

Step 1: Make pink pigs with marzipan and pink food coloring 

Step 2: Bake 2 cakes (I used 9-inch cake pans) and let them cool

Step 3: Make the buttercream frosting to mold the cakes together and frost around the circumference of the tiered cakes to stick the Kit Kat bars

Step 4: Stick on the Kit Kat bars (I used precisely 45 sticks)

Step 5: Tie the ribbon around the bars to keep them in place (I found mine to stick just fine but the internet warned me of falling walls of Kit Kat so I took the precaution just in case. Plus who can resist cute pink gingham ribbon)?

Step 6: Make the chocolate ganache for the "mud" and let it cool for 5 minutes 

Step 7: Spoon the mud onto the cake. Be careful not to pour too much around the edges so to avoid seepage through the Kit Kat bars.

Step 8: Place the pigs on the cake

Step 9: Step back, admire your work and snap a few pics!

DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS

Step 1: Making Little Piggies

Ingredients:

- Store-bought marzipan

- Pink food coloring or if you're like me and only have food coloring in RYGB, use 8 drops of red, 1 drop of blue and 2 drops of yellow and use a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of this to mix into your marzipan

- cutting board or large surface to work on

- 2 toothpicks

Then I simply followed this 2-minute video before making the pigs, then placed the box in the refrigerator.

Step 2: Cakes

I chose to make banana cakes to avoid chocolate overload and used the same recipe I had used for my son's monkey cake from Smitten Kitchen.

Step 3: Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

I slightly modified Deb's (master of Smitten Kitchen) recipe for frosting and used the following proportions:

Ingredients:

1 cup butter (room temp)

2 cups confectioner's sugar

4 tbsp whole milk

1 tsp vanilla extract 

2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

Method:

1) Place all the ingredients in a food processor and blend. 

2) Sandwich the cakes together with the frosting and then spread more frosting along the circumference of the tiered cakes. 

Step 4: Walls of Kit Kat

Break the Kit Kat bars into twos and place each pair of bars along the walls of the tiered, frosted cakes.  
I read on several blogs that it was safer to place the bars at an angle to avoid a wall-collapse, but with the frosting in place, the bars stuck to the cake pretty well.

Step 5: Tying the Gingham

In my hours of pregnancy-induced insomnia, I looked up "how to tie the perfect bow" because I am awful at bows. I'm not saying the bow on my cake is perfect. In fact it's very imperfect, but I thought I'd share for those who are interested.

Step 6: Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients: 

1 cup heavy cream

12oz Semi sweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli chips) 

Method:

Once again, an easy and quick recipe to make the ganache.

Boil cream. Add to dish with chocolate milk pieces. Stir. Cool for 5 minutes. 

Step 7: Spooning the "Mud" onto the Cake
Pretty simple.  I used a tablespoon and was extra careful when spooning the ganache along the edges of the cake.  I didn't suffer any seepage and found the ganache to be a perfect consistency.  If yours is too runny, you may want to wait for it to cool a bit more.
I saved the remainder of my ganache to serve on the side in the event my choco-loving family wanted a wee bit of extra frosting.

Step 8: Placing the Piggies in the Mud
I did this with my hands, but felt I might have needed a pair of tweezer-like tongs for more accuracy!  It looked fine in the end.  The marzipan stuck pretty well, so I didn't end up with headless pigs.

TA-DA!  Here it is, and here they are!  What a fun little project!