Tin Can Trial

Halle's first, first birthday is this Saturday and we have been busy planning and working on projects for a good chunk of this week. Though we have a bakery making Halle's birthday cake, B's Mom and I decided to tackle her smash cake ourselves. After doing some searching on pinterest, I came across the idea to make tin can cakes...

{Geek ever After via pinterest}

{via Oh Happy Day!}

So, on Tuesday while Halle was napping, we decided to try making our own cake from a can to see if it would work as Halle's smash cake for Saturday. B's Mom raided their cupboards and found a nice big can with tomatoes. We opened it up and emptied the tomatoes into another container and then washed out our can...

Even after rinsing and washing it a couple of times, it still smelt like tomatoes, so I thought instead of spraying it with something to make it non stick, that we would line the can with some parchment paper. So I traced and cut and made some parchment lining for our can...

With this being a trail cake, we opted to use an out of the box cake mix to see how things went. B's Mom had mixed it up while I was making our liner and when I was all done, we filled the can halfway up with our cake mix and popped it into a 350 degree oven to bake...

After 15 minutes in the oven, it still wasn't ready, so we decided to just leave it in there and check on it periodically to make sure it was coming along nicely. In the end it took closer to 35 minutes to bake. We just made sure it looked nice and firm and that a toothpick came out clean. Then we let it cool on a wire rack completely. 

Once it was completely cool, I was able to turn the can upside down on a plate and it slid right out - easy! 

Because it didn't bake completely flat, I had to cut the top off to get it exactly what I wanted it to look like. 

I just continued slicing off layers and used some Pillsbury icing to do a light ice between each layer. Then using an icing knife I did a quick and dirty ice of the whole cake. Nothing had to look fancy since it was just a first attempt to see how the whole thing would work out...

Not bad for our first attempt (I'll need to cut the top a little more straight next time! Whoops!). We also learned that we will fill our can a little more than half way next time, to give us a slightly larger cake. The final one will also have some pretty sprinkles on it to give it some pretty for our baby girl.


So there you have it - our attempt at a cake in a can! I can't wait to share the final smash cake and all of the other details from Halle's first party with you next week.


Have you ever tried baking a cake in a can, or tried out any other fun baking projects? Would love to hear how you have used pinterest to create your own party fun!