Taco Cake

This is an instructable on how to make a Taco Cake for all your fiesta themed celebrations. This cake was designed by my 8 yr old for his fiesta themed Blue&Gold Banquet for cub scouts. It was so easy to make and made $30 in donations at the bake sale auction, so he asked me to make an instructable for him.

Step 1: Supplies Needed

1. Yellow cake mix (or any other yellow colored type cake, lemon etc. Not necessary but makes it easier to blend the frosting color for a "taco shell" look.) & supplies to make cake
2. Buttercream frosting or other light colored frosting to make it easier to color yellow
3. Coconut flakes for "cheese' and "lettuce"
4. Oreo type cookies
5. Food coloring
6. Swedish fish candy or any other type gel candy that can be cut up to make "tomatoes" & "pepper" decorations.

Step 2: Bake the Cake

We don't have a photo of this but basically you just need to bake 1 cake round. We used an 8 in. cheescake pan so we could use all the batter and the cake would be slightly larger and puffier on top than it normally would be.

Step 3: Cut and Add Crumb Coat

Allow cake to cool. The cooler the cake is the easier it will be to handle because it will be sturdier. You can color your frosting yellow now. He used 14 drops of yellow to color one can of frosting. Cut cake in half. To make this easier, my son decided to measure the diameter of cake across with string and then fold the string in half. He then used this to measure the radius to cut the cake.Place a little frosting on base to hold the halves in place. Position both bottoms facing each other and 'glue' halves together with a little bit of frosting. Frost the cake lightly with a crumb coat and then place in fridge to set up for 15-20mins.

Step 4: Prepare Decorations

While the initial frosting is setting up, you can make the rest of the decor for the cake. Crush 5-8 oreos in a sandwich bag. You don't have to pulverize them as the larger chunks looked more like ground beef than the cookie dust. He colored the coconut with 12 drops of green food coloring for lettuce and 12 drops of yellow and 1 drop of red for cheese. He flattened the Swedish fish and cut large pieces of the red ones to look like tomatoes and the cut little slices of the yellow and green fish to look like peppers using scissors.

Step 5: Frosting and Decorating

After adding second coating of frosting. He first placed the oreo crumbs to simulate the ground beef . Then added coconut for lettuce and cheese. He added the swedish fish last for the tomatoes and peppers and ' Ole! He had a taco!!