Is it a bad idea to drop peanut butter cups or other small candies into a cake you're going to stack?

I’m being super ambitious with a 1st birthday cake, and not only am I using fondant for the first time (though I am doing two trial runs prior), but I’m also making a tiered cake for the first time (one trial run on less tiers). I had considered doing fruit filling, but let’s be real here… I don’t trust myself to fruit-fill a cake and not have the cake fall in on itself, regardless of how many dowels I shove in the damn thing.

Anyway, while I don’t trust my ability to use a fruit filling and keep the integrity of the tiers intact, I thought it would be fun (and actually more of a change from fruit fillings) to drop small candies into the cake batter.. like Reese’s PB cups (the small ones) or kisses or Hershey minis cut in half… something no bigger than the PB cup. I know that they’ll “float” better if I toss them around in flour before dropping them into the batter, but I wasn’t sure about the integrity of the cake.

I figured, since I’m using fondant and therefore chilling the cakes, that the candies inside would sort of re-solidify and not stay gooey, hence not compromising integrity. But I could be wrong. I don’t want to waste my time, even on a trial run, if someone here can tell me it won’t work.

Soooo.. will it work?