Thanksgiving Cake Designs with M&M's

M&M's are my new favorite art form! I used to think of them only as scrumptious pieces of chocolate candies enjoyed piece by piece. But now that I've been studying their colors and making patterns with them, I've realized that they can be much much more as an art form. Cakes designed with these chocolate candies are memorable and interesting! If you like art, colors, patterns, and baking then you'll want to try your own M&M cake.

Here, I'm sharing patterns and ideas for these mosaic style cakes.

This turkey pattern, designed by Sherri Osborn, was actually designed for a safety pin craft. Many of the patterns that I use are patterns already designed for other crafts. Lots of crafts use this same type of pattern, sometimes referred to (these days) as Pixel Patterns. Sometimes I use them exactly as I've found them, but I usually have to adjust them to work with M&Ms and the size of the cake. Look for tips of how to find patterns at the bottom of this page.

What's hard to distinguish in the picture above is that the eyes of the turkey are black M&M's. The surrounding M&Ms are brown and there is little contrast. If I made this pattern over again, I'd experiment with using white M&M's for the eyes with circles of black food coloring added for the pupils - as shown here.

I used a small paint brush dipped in black food coloring to make the black part of the eyes. It took 2-3 coats of food coloring for the black to "stick". I like the eyes on the top. They remind me of Muppet eyes (I'm working on Muppet patterns right now). But the eyes on the bottom might be more turkey-like.

This is my own design and one of my favorites. I like to add little touches of color around the edges of cakes with simple designs or single pieces as show here.

The top of the design uses White M&M's which can be hard to find. They can be ordered from MY M&M'S®. Mymm's offers 26 colors and will make you feel like a kid in a candy store (literally!). If you can't get white, then adjust the colors to make the candy corn 2/3 orange (top part) and 1/3 yellow (bottom part).

I've made this pattern available in a pdf form and you can print it out here.

Use colors of the season (any season!) to make a colorful border. Here I used brown, orange and yellow. Red would also work for fall. M&M borders look nice on round cakes too. This is one pattern kids will want to help add to the cake. For the cake on the right I've played around with adding a fancy greeting using tempered chocolate.

First, here's a link to the Pumpkin Pattern.

Most of the cakes on this page are cake dummies (inedible cake made for display or design only), this one however is a real cake. It's a one layer 8" round cake I made specifically to practice this design and to see how the orange M&M's looked on the chocolate icing. I like it!

I want to point out that when working on a real cake, I do not pipe the icing border onto the cake until after I have added (and am satisfied with) the pattern.

I took pictures along the way of how I transferred my pattern to the cake. The first thing was to find the center of the cake (and the pattern) and work outwards. This way I know I won't run off the edge of the cake with my design - similar to cross stitch. Always find your center and work from there. I suggest using a toothpick for lightly marking the center of the cake.

You see in picture #3 I had to grab my original pattern for reference. After transferring a row, I lost track of the placement of the next edge piece. Learn from my confusion - keep your original pattern handy!

Free wreath pattern here. This link is a pattern for the bow only. The rest of the wreath is simply filled in according to the size of your cake/circle template.

In the first picture you can see where I've worked out the entire pattern before adding anything to the cake. The key to this pattern is to use a traceable circle shape to get started - I've used a plastic cup approx. 4" in diameter. I first added the orange bow to the bottom of the circle, up into the circle a little bit. The bow is made from a grid pattern and is easy to follow. I then added the inside row of M&M's placing them directly on top of the circle I drew from the cup and filled it in until I completed the circle. For this particular wreath it was 21 M&Ms (yours might be different). Then I filled in the rest of the wreath with a mix of Thanksgiving colors to my satisfaction.

When I had my pattern just like I wanted it on paper, I used the same cup to make a slight impression in the icing on the actual cake. I made it a little higher than centered to allow for the bow (second photo). I transferred the inside-most circular row of M&Ms and the orange bow onto the cake then filled in the rest of the wreath.

When I was in kindergarten we dressed up like pilgrims and Indians for our Thanksgiving holiday party. This is the hat I remember making.

This simple pilgrim hat design, also by Sherri Osborn, was originally intended for a safety pin craft. Lots of safety pin craft patterns are the right size for cakes. I did change this one a little from the pattern - I changed the color of the hat band to make it stand out more.

Another idea for this cake is to turn the cake so it is vertical (portrait) and leave room underneath the hat to write a greeting such as Happy Thanksgiving or something similar.

The very best thing to do is measure your cake and allow 2 candies per inch. Be sure to leave room to pipe your border on the edges. My round cake will take 15 candies at the widest part. The sheet cake will take 21 wide by 14 tall. It's approx. 9"x13".

Find 25 M&M colors here!
Colored M&Ms in order from left to right by row are:
White - Cream - Yellow - Gold
Orange - Red - Brown - Maroon
Dark Pink - Pink - Light Purple - Light Blue
Blue - Dark Blue - Purple - Teal
Aqua - Electric Green - Green - Dark Green
Black - Silver
Shimmer Collection
Shimmer Golden - Shimmer Platinum - Shimmer Pearl
Find 25 M&M colors here!

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