Decorate a Pizza Cake

I first made this cake in 1995 for my oldest son's birthday. Since then it has been requested by friends and family for birthdays, graduations, sleepovers and all kinds of parties. The first one, I made up as I went along, but now I'm the family pro on the ever popular pizza cake.

I make the cake with two cake mixes in a 16 or 18 inch round pan. The first couple of times I rented a pan from a local bakery, and once I just ordered a cake in that size. You can also make smaller pizzas if you wish. If you are baking your own, set your oven to 300 degrees instead of the usual 350. This will prevent the cake from "crowning" in the middle so that your pizza is flat.

Using paste or gel food dye (Wilton makes one with no taste) color about three cups of ice dark red and frost the top of the cake. Now you get to the fun part: the toppings. I always make the pizza cake with the works. You'll need red fruit leather or fruit roll, marshmallows, green gummy worms, gumdrops in white, yellow and black, and Nestle's Bunch A Crunch candies. If you can't find Bunch A Crunch, chocolate covered raisins will do. Additional ingredients are confectioner's sugar, white sugar, and cocoa powder. Your tools will be a work surface covered with waxed paper, a rolling pin, and scissors coated with cooking spray or butter.

For pepperoni, use red fruit leather or fruit roll cut with scissors into a circle. The mushrooms are marshmallows which have been flattened with a rolling pin in a mixture of cocoa powder and confectioner's sugar. Cut the flattened pieces to the proper shape with scissors. Now use the rolling pin to flatten the white gumdrops using plenty of white sugar on the surface and rolling pin; cut curved onion strips or rings. The black gumdrops will have a disk cut from the bottom which is then shaped to a black olive slice. The yellow gumdrops can be cut into wedges for pineapple tidbits on the pizza. Next cut long thin slices from the green gummy worms for pepper strips on your pizza. The chocolate covered candies will be added "as is" to represent sausage. Get as creative as you like with adding other toppings of your choice. Flattened gum drops and fruit strips can be cut to any shape with buttered scissors. Once you have shaped all your toppings arrange them as desired on the cake.

The finishing touch on your pizza cake is the "cheese". The one pictured here is topped with grated white chocolate. If you want an effect of melted cheese, make a glaze by adding water, one teaspoon at a time to half a cup of confectioner's sugar. Tint the glaze pale yellow if desired and drizzle over the entire pizza. If you visit your neighborhood pizza parlor, they will often give you an empty box in which you can present your pizza cake for extra flair. I guarantee you, everyone will love it.