The M&M cake

Right, next. Before descending into the madness that promises to be my Easter Feast, quickly followed by Mothers' Day, I still need to take care of one more birthday.

What kind of cake do you want? I said.

M&Ms, he said.

Uh huh, I said, that's pretty standard, entry-level cakeage. Isn't there something else you'd like? Astronaut? Tennis court? Giant profiterole tower? Remember my piano cake?

Nope, just M&Ms, he said.

Right. Well, at least I won't have to concern myself with the details of construction or any sort of technical issues. Build cake, throw candy at it. Fine.

So I'm thinking that the way to make this visually brilliant is going to have to be through impeccable frosting, and colour-coordination. I will either make a wide flat cake or a tall narrower cake in a chocolate batter, ice it up with some hardy, durable, idiot-proof frosting, and then arrange the M&Ms somehow in some awesome way. Concentric rings of colour? Diagonal blocks? Oooh, perhaps I could create a geometric design out of them. All I know is that I won't be writing names or numbers or anything naff like that. Simple!

***update***

The cake itself will be Nigella's Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake, from Feast. She's got sugar pansies on the top, but I will probably use M&Ms. I just don't like the idea of a garish colourful cake right now, though. It would be cool to get those black and white M&Ms instead. I'll have to hunt for some appropriate cake decorations.