With white chocolate almond flavors throughout this whimsical pink and white striped beauty, I don’t think anything could better represent America’s favorite sprinkled Frosted Circus Animal Cookie in a cake! Perfect for any birthday cake, baby shower, or even for those die-hard cookie lovers like myself, this cake is sure to become an instant favorite. And the best part? It’s as fun to make as it is to devour!

I remember my Grandma June having a cookie jar in her kitchen always. Usually it was filled with oreos, or vanilla cookies, and often gingersnaps. We loved filling up her brown wide-rimmed cups with milk, and sitting down in her charming kitchen with a handful of as many cookies as we could, ready to dunk away. One time, though, she had frosted animal circus cookies… it might have well have been Christmas as far as we were concerned.

With those sweet little pink and white cookies, covered in rainbow nonpareils, each cookie was a small bite of shortbread heaven. I still buy these for my boys on occasion, and they always have that same look on their faces as I’m sure we did when we were little in my Grandma’s kitchen that one summer day.

If you haven’t heard of these cookies, you’re probably in a foreign country, most likely. I didn’t know they didn’t exist everywhere. So if you find something similar, that should do fine. Or, you can order them from Amazon here. As for you locals, I found mine at Walmart, Target, Smiths, etc.

I knew this needed to be a cake – and I made one in 2012 for my Instagram page! I save away the recipe, thinking it would be in my cookbook, Cake Confidence, but I ended up not liking my photos enough to make the cut. I still kept it tucked away… until now! This cake needed a re-do, so I added stripes, skipped the drip, and never looked back. This cake is a very sweet one, so if you want to tone down the sweetness, you can always lessen the extracts and use vanilla extract instead of clear extract. You might just have a slightly ivory looking buttercream in return, but it’s up to you!

I wanted the cake to not only look like my beloved circus cookies, but I wanted it to taste like them, too. With a strong almond and white chocolate flavor throughout, I knew that was a great place to start. My white cake was a perfect base with a touch of almond, and then I added white chocolate and almond emulsion/extract to my buttercream. I could see a shortbread cookie crust added to this cake easily, but I wanted to create a cake that was simple and fun.

The inside is swirled with pink and white, just like my original, and then I added the stripes with my HENRY CakeSafe Cake Comb (use the code BLONDIE for a discount). The trick to the cake comb is to freeze the cake after the initial white layer (the one with the indent), then fill in the indents with the pink with a piping bag. Keep scraping, the clean stripes will appear, I promise.

Also, the rainbow nonpareils are a MUST. And good news – they are everywhere in the grocery store. And they will probably be everywhere in your kitchen, too, if you don’t put a cookie sheet under the cake when you’re adding them on. 😉

I hope you guys love this one as much as we did; it was as fun to make as it was to share with friends and family. As always, if you make my cake, I’d love to see it! Tag me @bakingwithblondie on Instagram 🙂

happy caking! xo-Mandy

 

Frosted Circus Animal Cookie Cake
Author: Mandy | Baking with Blondie
The Popular Pink & White Frosted Animal Cracker Cookies are the star of the show with this playful cake, striped in the familiar pink and white, studded with rainbow nonpareils, and filled with soft almond cake layers and white chocolate almond buttercream.
Ingredients
  • Almond Pink Swirl Cake [br]
  • 4 Egg Whites, room temperature
  • 1/3 Cup Vegetable Oil
  • 1 Cup Buttermilk, room temperature
  • 2/3 Cup Sour Cream, room temperature
  • 2 teaspoons Clear Vanilla Extract
  • 1 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1 Box White Cake Mix (I prefer Duncan Hines, but you can use whatever you have access to)
  • Pink food gel coloring
  • [br]
  • White Chocolate Buttercream[br]
  • 1/2 Cup White Chocolate Chips
  • 1/4 Cup Heavy Cream
  • 3 Sticks (1 1/2 Cup) Unsalted Butter, kept at room temp for at least 10 minutes
  • 1 teaspoon clear almond extract
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
  • Pinch of salt
  • 5-6 Cups Powdered Sugar
  • Pink Gel Food Coloring
  • [br]
  • Wilton 6B Piping Tip
  • Frosted Circus Animal Cookies
  • Rainbow Nonpareils
Instructions
  1. FOR THE CAKE: [br] Preheat the oven to 325 degrees (convect bake). Prep 3 6″ cake rounds or 2 8″ cake rounds with a swipe of shortening and dust of flour. Set aside.
  2. In a large bowl (not stand mixer for this step), whisk together egg whites, oil, buttermilk, sour cream, and extracts.
  3. Sift in the cake mix and stir until just combined. Don’t overmix!
  4. Split the batter between two bowls and color one half of the batter in one bowl with “base pink” by Wilton.
  5. Using a cookie scoop, scoop alternating colors into your prepared cake rounds until all the pink and white have been divided equally.
  6. Bake for 25-17 minutes, until center is baked through (don’t overbake).
  7. Remove rounds from the oven and let cool in their pans for 1-2 minutes, then flip out onto a wire rack to cool to room temperature. Wrap in plastic wrap, and freeze until ready to frost.
  8. FOR BUTTERCREAM: [br] In a small glass bowl, pour heavy cream over white chocolate chips. Microwave for 30 seconds and stir until smooth. Let cool slightly. Set aside.
  9. Whip up butter in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment until light and fluffy.
  10. Add in extracts, salt, and white chocolate ganache and whip up until combined.
  11. Slowly add in powdered sugar. Whip on high speed for 2-3 minutes, then add in more heavy cream or powdered sugar if needed. Divide buttercream in half and tint one half pink.
  12. ASSEMBLY: [br]Stack and frost cake (filling the inside with some of the pink buttercream), then add crumb coat. Place cake into the freezer.
  13. Frost a thick layer of white buttercream on the entire cake.
  14. Using a cake comb (the one I used was from CakeSafe) scrape the stripe shape into the side of the buttercream. Freeze for 10 minutes.
  15. Pipe the pink stripes into the hollowed out area the cake comb left, then scrape the entire cake with a cake scraper to make even stripes.
  16. Press cookies and nonpareils onto the side of the cake, and pipe a buttercream crown using the Wilton 6B or 8B piping tip.
  17. Enjoy!