Smartie cake help, please

[KiwiBanana]

I'd like to make DS a cake for his birthday in June (want to practise first) and was thinking of doing a smartie cake like this, but I'm sure it wont look as neat.
I'm a total novice at cakes so does anyone know what sort of cake I should bake and what icing to use?

Wow you are very organised. That cake looks lovely.

I think you could just do a standard Victoria sponge with cocoa to make it chocolate flavoured and then use butter cream icing.

For an easy sponge take three or four eggs (or more if you want bigger cake) weigh them in their shells. Note the weight then use that as the amount of butter, sugar and flour. Beat butter and caster sugar till light and fluffy, add eggs one at a time, then flour (to make chocolate cake replace some of flour (Self raising) with cocoa. Once you have your batter if it seems stiff add a wee bit of milk. Then split between two flat round tins and bake.

To make butter icing beat butter until soft and sift in icing sugar and cocoa until you get the right texture (again you can add milk to loosen if necessary).

Sandwich cake with butter cream then cover in icing and decorate with smarties.

Good luck : )

Oh thank you! That sounds easy enough, will give it a try today I think. I'll be 39 weeks pregnant on his birthday so I want to be able to do it in my sleep and not be stressing!

How do I store it? Would it need to be in the fridge?

Airtight tin

Have they put something in smarties yet to stop them losing their colour from the icing? They used to go washed out white an horrible.
I always use m&ms.

For cake I would do the rule of 8 and 4
8oz flour,butter, caster sugar
4 eggs

If you have an electric mixer chuck in everything whisk up split into 2 8inch round cake tins.

Finished making it 10 minutes ago and already half of it has been eaten!
Thanks for the advice :) just need a bit more practise decorating it.

That looks fab.