I am planning on making my daughters smash cake for this Saturday.  I did a practice run yesterday.  I used 2 boxes of cake mix, but I followed directions to turn them into pound cakes so they were denser (I read to do that on Wilton's website).  I added a box of pudding for each cake mix and added an extra egg.  I got the cake out of the pan, and it looks good.  But I think the cake may be too dense for her to "smash" or do anything to!  Do you think I need to make the cake so dense?  What icing would you put on a smash cake?  Any ideas are appreciated!  I'm pretty new at this!

I'm not sure about the density of the cake. Normally when I make smash cakes, I go with a basic vanilla cake. Every now and then I'll do fondant on a cake (if requested by parent) but try to stick with buttercream it's much easier to tear into.

hope this was helpful.

Do you do 50-50 butter and crisco with your buttercream?  I was thinking all crisco would crust too much for her to make a mess :)  Thanks!

I've made several smash cakes (all in my gallery). I just use a regular cake mix, some are just one 2" layer, others are two layers - depends on the design. I've always used buttercream with fondant accents. I think fondant would be too difficult for a 1-year-old to dig in to.

AAn all shortening buttercream doesn't crust that hard its a light crusting unless you put it into the frig than it will crust more...a 50/50 isn't bad either you can do either.

You're going to have her smash a cake made from two cake mixes?  I always make a tiny smash cake just for the baby to smash.  The big cake is for everybody else.  You don't want people to have to eat the cake the baby digs into.

AThis is actually for pictures, not her party. I've seen pictures online with the giant cupcake and they're really cute. That's what put the idea in my head!