Moon Landing Cake

July 20: National Moon Day

“Houston, we’ve had problems.”

Our blog post to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing (1969-2019) is late, the butter pecan boxed cake mix did not have actual nuts in it and the frosting nearly smeared the whole cake surface with crumbs! Despite these problems, and the fact that we have never baked and frosted a ball-shaped cake before, we think our mini moon cake turned out kind of cute (although it looks more like the fictional Star Wars planet Hoth or some sort of giant snowball-asteroid?).

We decided to make this moon cake centerpiece at the last minute for a small group gathering to celebrate National Moon Day and watch the TV specials together while eating moon-themed foods for dinner (moon drop grapes, Moon Pies, shrimp-flavored Full Moon chips, Moon Cheeses and basic chicken salad sandwiches on crescent-shaped bread). Our friends Karen and Ken B. also bought limited edition marshmallow moon Oreo cookies.

Nevertheless, everyone had a nice time celebrating the golden moments of the historical lunar landing, ate festive food and got the gist of our moon cake idea for National Moon Day.

Recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Grease each half of a 3D ball/sphere baking pan set (such as Sunny Side Up Bakery brand or Wilton brand). Prepare cake mix according to the directions on the package. Divide the batter in two, filling each half of the pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes or more until the middle of the cake is cooked all the way through. Remove from the oven and cool completely.

When the cake halves are cooled, slice the top of the mounds to level them. On one of the cake halves, slice a small piece off the bottom to level it so that the cake can sit on its own. Make the vanilla buttercream frosting and stir until it is a spreadable consistency. Use a thin layer of frosting to attach both halves together to make one whole sphere.

Smear a little frosting on the bottom of a cake board and stick the cake in place. Frost the cake (we were unable to make it smooth so we just spiked it by pulling our spatula up randomly from the frosting). Top with a tiny astronaut toy and U.S. flag toothpick. Refrigerate to set. Bring to room temperature before slicing and serving (with ice cream!).

Notes

  • Tint the frosting with a little black gel color/food paste to make the moon surface gray instead of white, if desired.
  • Thanks to fellow Star Wars fan/friend Justin Q. for gifting us with the 3D ball/sphere cake pan. He attempted to make a Death Star cake and had problems so he hoped we would have better luck making Hoth a moon landing cake.