Milky Way Cake

Wow, it's been a week since I've posted a new recipe!  I guess that results from a combination of not feeling particularly inspired lately, and also being pretty busy.  Friends of ours were down this weekend to visit and celebrate Sean's birthday.  I did a lot of cooking and baking in preparation for their visit, so you can expect quite a few posts in the near future.  

That's Sean doing his Tom Haverford face.  If you don't know who that is, go watch Parks & Recreation.  You won't regret it.

I saw this recipe on The Pioneer Woman's blog months ago, and had been waiting for Sean's birthday to roll around.  He loves Milky Way candy bars, so I thought this would be perfect for him.  In reality, this cake should have an alternate title: "Oh My God, Call Wilford Brimley Because I Just Got the Diabeetus".  Potential metabolic conditions aside, this is a pretty good cake!  I'm not nuts about Milky Ways like Sean is, so that probably has something to do with me not being over the moon about it.  

You'll need:

11 full-size Milky Way bars, divided use
3 sticks butter, divided use
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup buttermilk
3 tsp vanilla extract, divided use
2 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs
2 cups powdered sugar
1 dash salt
1/2 cup milk (more if needed)
1 cup pecans, finely chopped


Preheat your oven to 300 degrees F.  In a large sauce pan or double boiler over very low heat, melt 8 of the Milky Way bars together with 1 stick of butter, stirring to combine.  Once melted, remove from heat and set aside.  I won't kid you... it's going to look a little gross there for a while.  You're going to think that you made a mistake.  But you haven't  It will start to look more appetizing.

See, it's looking kinda nasty.

Ahh... much better.

Sift the flour and salt, then set aside.  Mix the baking soda with buttermilk and add 2 tsp of vanilla.  Set this aside also.


Cream 1 stick of butter with the 2 cups of granulated sugar.  Add the eggs 1 at a time.  Add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture alternately to the creamed mixture, mixing after each addition.  Add the melted candy bar mixture to the mix and combine.

Pour the batter into a greased jelly roll pan or 9x13 baking pan and bake for 1 hour or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.  Mine took just over an hour.

Be more patient than I am and make sure that everything is well combined.  See the lighter swirls there?  Yeah, I was in a rush.

Now, to make the icing.  Melt the remaining 3 Milky Way bars with the remaining 1 stick of butter in your saucepan or double boiler.  Hey, no one said this was low fat.  Add the powdered sugar, dash of salt, milk, 1 tsp vanilla, and chopped pecans.  Stir over low heat.  Feel free to add some more milk if it looks a little tight.


Pour the icing over your cooled cake and allow to set.  This is a super sticky cake (who would have thought since it contains almost a dozen candy bars, right?), so don't expect things to be nice and neat when slicing.


Congratulations!  You now have Type II diabetes.  Enjoy the cake =)