Hello everyone! Kristen and I can smell summer in the air, can you? Soon we will be enjoying beach weekends, a nearly deserted campus (hello, more parking!), fruit smoothies and (hopefully) being tan! As we’re enjoying a relaxing break before the summer semester begins, we thought we would be productive and do a bright, summery shenanigan!

One of our readers, Sarah, suggested this polka dot cake to us on our Facebook page, and thought it fit the bill! The colors are fun and it’s certainly unique, but quite honestly we didn’t have faith in this pin. We didn’t think it would work at all, so we were pleasantly surprised when ours turned out like this compared to the original:

Polka Dot Cake           Polka Dot
Our Version                                                                                   Pinterest Version

It’s pretty cute, right? To make this fun, summery cake, first you’ll need to grab your ingredients:

  • Two white cake mixes
  • food coloring
  • any kind of icing (your choice- go crazy!)

DSC05801

The original pin was actually a Cake Pop Cake. The baker had colored white cake mix and baked it into spheres in one of those cake pop makers. Then she baked the cake balls into the white cake.

We don’t have a cake pop maker (and we’re willing to wager our average reader doesn’t either), so we decided to try this shenanigan using our trusty mini cupcake pan.

With one of the boxes of cake mix, make the batter and separate it into small bowls. Dye each bowl of batter a different color. Pour these colored batters into the mini cupcake pan and bake to the package directions.

neon mini cupcakes

Once they are out of the oven, let them cool and pop them out of the pan. We ended up using 28 mini cupcakes overall, so you may want to aim for that many.

polka dot cake ingredients

While your mini cupcakes are cooling more completely, you can make batter out of the other cake mix. Now, pour a thin layer in the bottom of both of your round cake pans.

polka dot white cake

Place your colorful mini cupcakes in the pans.

baking cupcakes into a cake

Pour the rest of your white batter on top of the mini cupcakes.

how to bake cupcakes into a large cake

A big spoon will help you spread the batter around.

how to bake cupcakes into a large cake

Bake your cake rounds. Ours ended up being a little under-cooked  so we suggest that you bake them for a little longer than the package suggests.

Note: these cakes are not exactly pretty. Once you frost them you may want to consider sprinkles!

two layer polka dot cake

Once the cake has cooled, pop one of the pan and place it upside down on a plate. Placing it upside down allows the curvy top of the cake to be on the curved plate, a perfect fit! Then the flat bottom of the cake is face-up, so the other cake round has a firm foundation.

flip the cake

Frost the flat top of the bottom layer and place the other layer on top.

add the top of the cake

Now frost your cake. We recommend you use two tubs of icing. This cake is bigger than most and we had a difficult time icing it with just one tub of frosting.

adding the icing to a polka dot cake

Congratulations! You’ve effectively called shenanigans on this cake!

Neon Polka Dot Cake

We really like the way this cake turned out. It’s very fun and everyone we fed it to was so surprised, pleased and confused when they saw it. We told our friends how we made it, but if you want to keep an air of mystery, we won’t breathe a word!

Thanks again to Sarah for sending this cake our way! If you have any good ideas for shenanigans, be sure to let us know on Facebook or in the comments below!

Shananometer- homemade peppermint serving tray

Check out our other popular Shenanigans:

birthday cake numbers          how to make a hamburger cupcake          easy-valentine-s-day-desserts

Homemade Birthday Cake                   Hamburger Cupcake                  5 Minute Mini Cheesecake

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13 Responses

  1. carla

    Not a bad effort at all!! I think it’s really hard to get things exact when following a recipe!!

  2. Joann

    Great surprise cake!!! So colorful and looks yummy! Best is that you can make it the color of your choice.

  3. craftyminx1980

    I think this pin comes from Rosie- Cake Diva ( i follow her on FB) I think to get better circles you can use cake pop trays. She also does an amazing leopard print cake that I want to try.

    • werecallingshenanigans

      Thanks, we will have to check it out and follow her! And we didn’t have a cake pop tray so we improvised with our mini muffin pan, but if we get the other pan we will try it again!

  4. blanca

    Ok a question- won’t the cupcakes get hard from baking again inside the batter? Or how long do the cupcakes bake

    • werecallingshenanigans

      We thought that they would be hard, but surprisingly the cupcakes inside bake just fine and have the same consistency of the rest of the cake. (you just bake the little cupcakes like you normally would – making sure that they are not overcooked to begin with).