Easy Nyan Cat Cake

Hey guys, I thought I’d start off my blogging experience with the cake I had THE most fun making – the Nyan Cat Cake!

When I first saw a picture of the cake, I was seriously impressed. But I also knew I was way out of my league as an amateur baker. The cake recipe here is a version I adapted to my own abilities, using a variety of sources that I collaborated into my own recipe. This cake was definitely the cake that I had the most fun making, and was a really big hit at my sister’s party. In fact, all the guests decided that part of the festivities should be to watch me decorate!

This recipe took me about 4 hours to make (including cooking and cooling time), so make sure you have plenty of your day spare to make this!

PS: If you don’t know who Nyan Cat is, he’s an adorable 8-bit pop tart cat that flies through the universe pooping rainbows all the while singing “Nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan nyan, etc.” He’s become a much loved character throughout my generation on the internet and I thought ‘What better cake to make for my sister’s birthday?’

Now, if you want to make this cake (and I highly recommend you do), you will need:

• The whitest cake box mix you can find. It has to be as light as possible, or the colours won’t turn out well. I used Betty Crocker Vanilla Cake.
• The ingredients it lists on the box, but double the amount of eggs and only use the egg whites.
• Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple food dye. If you’re mixing blue and red food dye to get the purple, I would recommend using a higher proportion of red to blue as it turns out a more greyish colour if you use equal proportions, or too much blue.
• Black and white writing icing. If you can’t find either of these in your local supermarket, try making black and white frosting and put it into a frosting bag with a very thin, round nozzle.
• Enough vanilla buttercream frosting to cover the cake and add more decorations on top. I used about 500g (just over a tub of vanilla frosting).
• Mini MnMs. I used a jumbo pack but I found there were plenty left over so a standard packet is fine, too.
• A cherry pop tart. Unfortunately I could not find any cherry ones where I live, so I had to settle with a Cookies and Cream pop tart.
• Butter or oil to grease the cake pan

You will also need:

·         A large mixing bowl

·         A medium cake pan

·         A mixing spoon

·         6 bowls

·         6 tablespoons

·         A knife or cake leveller

·         Piping bag with a thin nozzle

First step is the easy one – make the cake batter following the instructions it gives you on the back of the box. Try to gently mix it together by folding the mixture over and stirring as little as possible, until just combined. Try not to use an electric beater. This is to make the cake as soft as possible, as over mixing the batter makes it tough.

Next you need to divide the batter evenly into the 6 bowls and add the red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple food colour (several drops into each one). Stir the batter with the tablespoons.

As you can see in the picture, if you’re mixing red and blue to get purple you need to make sure you use a higher proportion of red to blue, or it will be a more greyish colour. The orange is fine in equal proportions of red to yellow.

Now you need to put the batter into the greased cake pan. Believe it or not, this process is a lot easier than it looks, and turns out great. First you’ll want to pour in the red batter, and shake it around until it reaches each edge of the pan. Next you need to add the orange batter. Don’t drizzle it all over the red batter, but gently pour it into the middle. Then you’ll need to shake the pan gently to spread it out as far as you can. Be careful not to do it too vigorously, though, as the bottom layers may flip over the top. Repeat this with the rest of the colours. Each layer will have to have slightly less area covered than the one below it, as shown below.

It won’t make a big difference if you have an irregular shape, but the circlier the better. J

Now it’s time to put it in the oven for the time the box mix says! I cooked mine for about an hour. Once the cake is ready to come out, cool it on the stove top for about 15-20 minutes and then put it in the fridge until fully cooled.

While the cake is cooking and cooling, you can separate the MnMs into the different colours. This is quite a time consuming process, so see if you can find any helpers. As there are no purple MnMs, I used the light pink ones instead and no one seemed to know the difference. They were too excited by the cake itself!

As I said before, a normal sized packet may be much easier than a jumbo packet. I used about 12 of each colour for the rainbow, but you may need more or less depending on the size of your cake.

Now might be a good time to start washing up, as you’ll need to reuse 3 of the bowls and tablespoons for the frosting. (Or get 3 new bowls and tablespoons.) 

Unfortunately I did my measurements for the frosting by guesstimations, so I can’t give you the exact amounts I used.

For the blue frosting to cover the entire cake: I used approximately 2/3 of a 500g tub of vanilla frosting. Depending on the size of the cake you’re making, you may want to increase or decrease this amount. Add the vanilla frosting to a large bowl and mix with blue food dye. It’ll take all your blue food dye to make it the dark blue we want, so just add enough to make it a reasonable blue.

For the grey frosting that will make the cat’s face, legs, and tail: You’ll need about 1-3 tablespoons of vanilla frosting mixed with a tiny amount of black food dye. I actually had plenty of this frosting left over, but it’s difficult to mix food dye with only 1 tablespoon of frosting so I made ample.

For the pink frosting to make the cheeks: you’ll actually only need less than a teaspoon of this colour, but once again it is very difficult to mix food dye with such a small amount of frosting so I made ample. About 2 tablespoons of frosting and a drop or two of red food dye is decent, mixed with a teaspoon.

Now for the best part of all – the decorating!

Once the cake has fully cooled, cut off the top of the cake using a cake leveller or a knife.

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You’ll need to cut off enough of the risen part to fit a pop tart on it, so it doesn’t slide off the side.

Next, frost the entire cake (sides and all) with all of your blue frosting. Try to make the surface as smooth as possible to give it a nice 8-bit effect. Of course, this is difficult to make it perfectly smooth so just do the best you can.

Cook the pop tart and place it slightly to the right of the cake. Next, you need to make the rainbow. I’d recommend looking up Nyan Cat on google images and using a picture as a reference as to how to make it. I put 3 mini red MnMs at the top left of the pop tart, in a straight line. Then I put another 3 red MnMs slightly lower than the others, then 3 slightly higher, then 3 slightly lower, etc. I did this with all of the colours. Unfortunately they came out a bit wonky.

Now it’s time to start making the cat. J Put the grey frosting into a frosting bag and make the outline of a cat’s head at the bottom right of the pop tart, then fill it in. Make it fairly large. For the feet you want to make two thin rectangles next to each other below the head and pop tart, and two more next to each other at the other corner, as shown below. Add the tail on top of the rainbow.

Next, outline the pop tart, head, tail and feet with black writing icing.

To make the face you need to add the mouth, nose, and eyes with the black writing icing. Do this by referring to the picture below, or your google images reference picture. Try and make the corners as sharp as possible to do the 3D effect. Next, with the white writing icing, make a little ‘sparkle’ by putting a blob in the top left quarter of the eye. Lastly, make the cheek blush by putting a little pink frosting on both sides of the face.

The final step is to make the little stars by using the white writing icing. Once again, refer to your google images picture or my cake below as to how to design it. 

Congratulations! You have now finished the Nyan Cat Cake! Enjoy!

My source for the rainbow cake: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqKIHGD_pmg

The rest of my ideas came from google images and me. 

Please comment your results from making this, and any feedback or questions you may have!