Giant Cupcake Smash Cake

I made the giant cupcake smash cake for my niece’s first birthday a few weeks ago. To make the cake I used the Wilton Giant Cupcake Pan. I used my banana cake recipe for the cake, since the birthday girls loves bananas. I put about 2.5 cups of batter in the top part of the cupcake and 3.5 cups in the bottom.

Once the cakes cooled I wrapped them up and stuck them in the fridge overnight. The next day I started by frosting the bottom part of the cupcake. Since this was going to be a smash cake I knew that i couldn’t put any supports in it since I didn’t want baby to get hurt while smashing! Since I couldn’t put any supports in I decided not to torte the bottom part of the cupcake at all. I just frosted the sides smooth with white buttercream and then used a very small spatula to indent the pleats of the cupcake. A simple bead border using a tip #12 was added around the base.

For the top of the cupcake I used all natural India Tree food coloring to dye the buttercream in dark and light pink. I used tip 1M to make the buttercream swirls going around the top in shading tones of dark pink to white (which I learned is called ombre).

I was a little worried that the cake wouldn’t stay up without any support, especially since I ahd to drive it from NJ to Long Island, but it did! I did insert a long lollypop stick into the top of the cake once it was done to give it a little support and it was removed just before the big SMASH!