This holiday season, don't wear your ugly sweater, eat it instead. Expanding upon our affinity for everyone's favorite trendy ugly Christmas sweater, the ugly sweater cake was born. White elephants, gift exchanges, and family gatherings, this holiday cake is precisely what you've been missing. Serve it up at your own ugly sweater Christmas party, or simply make it at home and have fun decorating it.
In true fashion of the ugly Christmas sweater, there is no right or wrong way to make this cake. As long as it embodies the spirit of Christmas in the most tacky way, you're making your cake right. But just in case you need a little help in the hipster department, Delish has introduced an easy way to adorn your sheet pan cake with ugly sweater decorations.
For a foolproof ugly sweater cake, bake a classic chocolate — or whatever flavor you fancy — sheet pan cake at 350°F for twenty-five minutes. If you want a more subtle flavor, yellow cake mix is a great alternative, just make sure you prep your ugly sweater cake pan with parchment paper for easy removal. Simply follow the package instructions.
Next, slather that bad boy with vanilla frosting with red food coloring, or red frosting if you can find it — it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas already. Make sure you're dealing with a cooled cake before you start decorating! If you have green fondant around, you can even make special trim for the neckline. If you want to use homemade buttercream for this recipe, you're more than welcome. It's all about how much time you wish to spend in the kitchen whipping up this Christmas cake.
Now, the real fun begins. There are countless options you could choose to dress up your ugly sweater. If you're an amateur, best leave it to the pros and take a few tips from Delish here. Using piping bags, you can outline the cake to look like a sweater. Then with the help of some Hershey's kisses or large chocolate chips, your sweater just got buttons. Adorn with a few candy stars, sprinkles, a candy cane or two, M&M's, Rolos, marshmallows, and teddy grams. Looking pretty festive already isn't it? You can use any holiday candies you have around the house to create this fun effect.
The real genius lies with the M&M's. With a simple wavy line of chocolate syrup and strategic placement of M&M's your ugly sweater just got Christmas lights. Well, edible Christmas lights with just the right touch. Remember, it still is a cake. We don't want anyone choking on plastic because it made the cake look cool.
As long as you use a bit of icing to outline the sweater and a whole mess of tacky looking edible decorations, your ugly sweater cakes is guaranteed to be the holiday party centerpiece. Dress it up, adorn it, or sprinkle on whatever ugly decorations you can think of. The uglier the better, but we love the look of the Christmas tree decoration on the photo above.
Look out gingerbread houses, you just got one upped. The ugly sweater cake, now that's called winning. Your Christmas party ideas just got even more exciting. To turn this into a fun family activity, simply make two cakes and divide into two teams. Don't forget to put down parchment paper in your cake pans, though! This DIY Christmas sweater cake is sure to bring everyone together in a more interactive than whipping up Christmas cookie recipes. You don't even need to have an ugly sweater party to make this work.
