Volcano Cake

  4.7 – 23 reviews  • Baking
Level: Easy
Total: 1 hr 10 min
Prep: 20 min
Cook: 50 min
Yield: 18 to 24 servings

Ingredients

  1. 2 (18.25-ounce) boxes red velvet cake mix (recommended: Duncan Hines)
  2. 2 2/3 cups water
  3. 1 cup vegetable oil
  4. 6 eggs
  5. 3 (12-ounce) cans chocolate whipped frosting (recommended: Betty Crocker)
  6. 1 (6.4-ounce) can green decorating icing (recommended: Betty Crocker Easy Flow)
  7. 1 (6.4-ounce) can red decorating icing (recommended: Betty Crocker Easy Flow)
  8. 1 (6.4-ounce) can orange decorating icing (recommended: Betty Crocker Easy Flow)
  9. 1 (6.4-ounce) can yellow decorating icing (recommended: Betty Crocker Easy Flow)
  10. 1 (.68-ounce) tube yellow gel decorations (recommended: Cake Mate)
  11. 1 (.68-ounce) tube red gel decorations (recommended: Cake Mate)

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray 2 (8-inch) cake pans, 2 (10-inch) cake pans and 1 (6-inch) Bundt pan with cooking spray and set aside.
  2. Beat cake mix, water, oil, and egg whites in a large bowl with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Scrape down sides of bowl and beat for 2 minutes on medium speed. Divide batter equally between prepared cake pans.
  3. Bake 8-inch cakes and 6-inch Bundt cakes in oven for 35 to 40 minutes and 10-inch cakes for 45 to 50 minutes, or until tester comes out clean. Remove and cool completely.
  4. To assemble, use a serrated knife to slice off the tops of the 8 and 10-inch cake so the surface of each cake is flat. Place the cut tops into a large bowl and break up to from large crumbs. The crumbs will be used a “lava rocks” at the base of the volcano. Slice the bottom off the 6-inch bunt cake so it sits flat.
  5. Spread a thin layer of chocolate frosting between the 10-inch cake layers and stack. Spread a thin layer of chocolate frosting between 8-inch cake layers and stack. Place another thin layer of frosting on top of the 8-inch layer cake and place the bunt cake cut side down on top. Place a dollop of frosting on top of the 10-inch cake and carefully, place 8-inch cake on top and center of 10-inch cake.
  6. Use a serrated knife to trim edges around the tops of both cakes to create a cone shaped cake. (Make angled cuts downward and leave a round base on top for icing to “flow” from.)
  7. To decorate, frost outside of entire cake with remaining chocolate frosting. Place the cake crumbs around the base of the cake. Pipe green icing around the entire bottom of the cake for “grass”. To create “flowing lava” pipe red icing a quarter from the top of cake in downward strokes to the middle of the cake with ribbon tip. Repeat technique with orange icing, starting almost at top of cake and ending where red icing begins with slight overlap. Repeat technique with yellow icing starting at the very top of cake and overlap orange icing. Drizzle yellow and red gel coloring around the very top of cake.
  8. For the smoke effect place a few pieces of dry ice into glass candle votive. Place the votive into the hole of the bunt cake. Pour a small amount of warm water into the votive and watch it smoke.

Reviews

Mark Gomez
This cake was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I used chocolate and vanilla boxed mixes, and I also used a bundt pan in place of the 8″ rounds. My top layer was my pampered chef measuring bowl. Having a cake leveler really helped – I purchased for this cake and wish I had it for all of my cakes! Only like $6 on Amazon. Going to do the lava out of fondant and put big cake sprinklers on top instead of dry ice. Looks great!
Christopher Boyd
i am doing this for a school project. any idea how big it is? in cm and inches preferably thx.
Michael Walker
can you make it explode or some thing with out reking the cake
Kyle Sullivan
Made this for my Granddaughters 1st Birthday Party .. It was a huge Hit ! Gave me the courage to try something harder. Thanks Sandra: If you want something totally Different Try this .. not as hard as it looks and dont forget to add the LOVE !!
Susan Jackson
My daughter loved it and I had a blast making this for her. It was used in her Hawaiian themed turning 11 birthday party. I had 18 kids with 7 adults present and tons of cake left over! We changed it up a bit by using our own flavor of cake mix and added the volcano to a sheet cake.
Then we added palm trees, little hula girls, and mini umbrellas. I used sprinkles for the sand and water. It turned out cute!
We had lots of raves! Thanks for sharing!
Edward Alexander
This is tremendous – I went to the dollar store and bought some mini dinosaurs and palm trees to decorate the volcano for my sweetie’s 40th birthday. It was a HOOT!
Tyler Ortiz
I made this for my son’s seventh birthday and it came out great and was super easy! I put it on top of a sheet cake and used some lego men to “run” from the volcano. The one caution I have is regarding the votive candle holder – – DO NOT do it!!! The guy at the ice place told me it would shatter in the cake. Use a dixie cup and you’ll be OK. But the cake was great and I would do it again!
Cassandra Stephens
In my science class we were learning about natural disasters and we had to do a project. The project was to make our own disaster my group had volcanoes and what quickly popped into my head was the episode I saw of you making this cake. Me and my friends made the cake (without any problems) for the project and our teacher said it was the most creative thing ever. But at the end we gave a shout- out to you; Sandra Lee for getting us an A+ tasting and intelligent Volcano. 🙂
Carla Vance
I loved this It is soo awsome and good!!!!!
Robert Maddox
My 12 year old daughter and I made this cake into a Pokemon themed volcano. This cake was very easy to bake and assemble. We used the Pampered Chef measuring bowl to as the baking dish for the top part so we wouldnt’ have to buy small bundt pan and it worked perfect. For the colored icing, we used white store-bought frosting, gel food color and plastic baggies snipped at the corner to make red, orange and yellow “lava” stripes. Our local shops do not sell dry ice but I was able to find it at a welding shop.

 

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