This one comes with a health warning

.....seriously!

For the clandestine cake club this week we had to cook "novelty cakes". After thinking about piñata cakes, novel tea cakes, and chilli and chocolate cakes I settled on a popcorn cake. As you do.

This is possibly the only cake for which you could buy all of the ingredients at a cinema snack stand: Marshmallow, popcorn, smarties (or M＆Ms) and jellybeans. What's more, there is no oven involved.

For the cake you need:
100g popcorn (we popped our own, unsalted and unsugared)
1 cup M＆Ms (chocolate, not the peanut ones) or smarties.
1 packet jellybeans or the like. If you can get acidic ones it might help.
100g butter
400g marshmallows

Mix the popcorn, M＆Ms and jelly beans.

Put butter (and a little light cooking oil) in a saucepan and heat gently. When butter is melted add marshmallows. Keep stirring (i.e don't stop to take a photo. This was almost a disaster.)

Stir until smooth, then pour over popcorn et al. Mix together well. (Be warned - this is stickier and stringier than most glues.)

Oil a bundt pan (I used a silicon bundt pan, oiled with a very little sunflower oil), then press the mixture into it whilst still warm. Stick that in the fridge. Leave it. Once it has set (a couple of hours will do fine), turn it out onto a plate.

To ice it, take another 100g of marshmallows and a little knob of butter, and stick them in a dish in the microwave oven at half power for a minute or so. Stir until smooth, and if you wish, add colouring.

Spread this goo over the top, decorate with excess M＆Ms and voila! The icing is really sticky, but also very shiny - and it stays where it is put!


This is one solid cake, and you don't need much: my estimate is that it would do for 40 people assuming they didn't channel their inner 5 year old too much.

Yum