the coolest cake ever!

For the past few weeks, I've been traveling through Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma visiting family.  We ended our visit on Route 66 in Oklahoma, visiting Cookie Bandit's family.  While there, I talked my mother-in-law into making a cake that I've been wanting to make for quite some time.  It's an M&Ms Barrel Cake!

Cookie Bandit and his family are the biggest M&M lovers in the world, so this cake was perfect.  They love M&Ms so much, that his parents actually made us a special cookbook when we got married.  I just had to show it to you...

Sounds intriguing, right?  Here are the "recipes"!

Haha!  I love that cookbook and use it often.  So, of course, I had to insist on making the M&Ms cake for our big family birthday celebration.  I first saw this cake on Mommy Topics.  What I love about it is that you can use any cake and frosting recipe that you want to...the secret is in the decorating.

We made a two-layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for filling.  We covered the outside with chocolate frosting and then proceeded to make our barrel out of Kit-Kats.  I don't suggest trying to construct the cake by yourself...the Kit-Kats kept falling off while I was trying to put it together, so my father-in-law came to the rescue.

Once we got all of the Kit-Kats in place, we tied a ribbon around the cake to hold them in.

Then, we filled the top with two medium bags of M&Ms!

The cake was a huge hit...especially with this little guy. :)

This is the perfect way to dress up any cake for a special occasion, and it requires no cake decorating skills!  Hope you love it as much as we did!