A Super Quick and Easy Campfire Cake

This cute campfire cake was decorated in under 20 minutes.

My Jack is one of the best people I know. He is always on the go, always helping somebody with something, rarely making time for himself. He doesn’t expect much and he doesn’t ask for much. That’s why when his one and only request for his birthday this year was to spend a weekend at our family’s camp, I knew I had to make it happen. And when it came time to make his birthday cake, I knew I wanted it to be just another way to make his wish come true. If you were to ask Jack, or probably anyone for that matter, the best part of camping is spending long days fishing in the lake and long nights relaxing by the campfire. So, I knew the cake needed to have both of these elements included to make it really special.

With limited time and a husband that actually prefers boxed cake mix and store bought frosting over homemade, I set out to find a quick and easy way to make a special cake for my special guy. I had some ideas in my head, but didn’t yet know exactly how I was going to accomplish them, so I headed out to the store in hopes that something would spark inspiration.

I’m really happy with the way it all came together.

The campfire cake before lighting the “fire”

The supplies I ended up using:

• A baked yellow cake from a boxed mix
• A container of Pillsbury Chocolate Fudge Frosting
• A container of Pillsbury AquaBlue Vanilla Frosting
• Swedish Fish Candies, in both regular and mini sizes
• A Twizzlers Pull n' Peel Candy
• A Hostess HoHo Snack
• 3 Original Rice Krispie Treats
• A pretzel rod and a pretzel stick
• A handful of Nestle Buncha Crunch Candies
• Frosted Shredded Mini Wheats Cereal
• Chocolate Jimmies
• Edible Green Food Spray
• Edible Silver Glitter Food Spray

Decorating this cake could not have been quicker or easier. I started with a single box of yellow cake mix and baked it in a 10” round cake pan. I wrapped it and let it cool overnight. I spread the chocolate frosting casually over about 2/3 of the cake. I wanted it to look like dirt so I didn’t worry about it being super smooth. When the chocolate portion was frosted, I pulled out the container of aqua blue vanilla frosting I had purchased. I frosted the remainder of the cake, this time being somewhat sloppy on purpose, pulling the frosting away from the cake with my spreader to make peaks (waves) in the “water”. I knew that I wanted to use the HoHo as a “log” you might sit on near the water to fish, so I attempted to slice some lines across it to look like tree bark, but this was only making the chocolate shell break off in pieces so I just left it as it was and set it down on the “dirt”. I had purchased a bag of Swedish Fish and a movie-theater box of Mini Swedish Fish, not quite sure as to which I would be using. I knew I wanted to have some fish floating in the water and for one of them to be “caught” on a fishing pole. Speaking of fishing poles, I made mine out of a pretzel stick and a strand of a Twizzler’s Pull n’ Peel. If I had more time I would have attempted to slice the Twizzler’s strand down the center to create a thinner “fishing line” but time just didn’t permit so I used the whole strand. I tied one end of the Pull n’ Peel around the pretzel stick fishing rod and attempted to insert the other end into the mouth of one of the regular sized Swedish Fish. (I had first poked a hole through the mouth of the fish using a toothpick.) Unfortunately, this plan didn’t work quite as I had hoped. The fish appeared as though it was going to rip apart if I put the Pull n’ Peel strand all the way through so I settled on it being just tucked into the back of the fish mouth. I stuck the back end of the fish down in the “water” and tilted his mouth upright and leaned the “ fishing pole” against the back of my “log”. To make the tree, I used a pretzel rod, 3 original Rice Krispie treats and edible green food coloring spray. I basically formed the Rice Krispie treats around one end of the pretzel rod in the shape of an oval to look like the branches/leaves and then I sprayed it with the green food coloring. I then stuck the bottom end of the “tree trunk” all the way down in the back of the cake. Next, I made the “rocks” around the campfire using Nestle Buncha Crunch sprayed with edible silver glitter spray. I simply laid them down on the cake in the shape of a circle. For the finishing touches on this cake, I first made the “grassy” circle around the tree trunk using the Shredded Frosted Mini Wheats cereal and the same green food spray I had used for the tree. Before spraying the cereal, I crushed it into small pieces and put it in a disposable bowl. I then sprayed it and poured it from the bowl around the base of the “tree”. When this was done, I sprinkled chocolate jimmies around on the “dirt” and added a couple more of the regular sized fish on the top of the "lake" and then pressed some of the mini fish into the side of the "water".  When this was all done, the last step was to put the candles into the "fire" circle.  I selected all orange and yellow candles from a multi-color pack and placed nine of them in the center of the circle in three rows of three, alternating colors as I went. I pressed them down as far as they could go into the cake and put them as close together as I could so that when they were lit, they would combine to make one large "campfire" flame instead of nine individual candle flames.  And that was it! Of all the cakes I've ever decorated, this was the quickest and easiest I've ever done and I still think it's pretty adorable. I also loved that with the exception of the candles, every single part of this cake was edible. I hope Jack loved it as much as I did.  -Kay