Floral Birthday Cake
Dessert just got a whole lot prettier! This floral cake is the perfect way to add a touch of elegance to any occasion.
Servings: 16 servings
Calories: 466kcal
Ingredients
Ingredients
For the cake
- 4 eggs
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- ¾ cup full fat buttermilk
- ½ cup whole milk
- 4 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 cups granulated white sugar
- 2 teaspoons fine salt
- 3 ¾ cups all purpose flour
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
For the frosting
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- ¼ cup heavy cream
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- gel food coloring (we used pink, purple, yellow, green and peach)
Instructions
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 320 F. Line a 13” x 9” baking pan with parchment.
- In a large mixing bowl, add the eggs, oil, buttermilk, milk, and vanilla. Whisk until combined.
- Add the sugar and salt and whisk until fully combined.
- Sift in the flour and baking powder and whisk gently until there are no lumps taking care not to over mix.
- Transfer the cake batter to the prepared pan then place in the middle of the preheated oven. Bake for 40 minutes or until the cake is risen, golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave to cool in the pan while you make the frosting.
Frosting:
- In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment fitted add the softened butter and beat for a couple of minutes until smooth and creamy
- Add the powdered sugar and beat until it changes from a sand-like consistency to thick and smooth.
- Add the heavy cream and vanilla and beat on a medium speed for at least 5 minutes. The buttercream will be smooth, thick and fluffy.
- Divide the buttercream between 5 bowls (or however many colors you’ll be using). Add a drop of food coloring to each and mix thoroughly adding more color until you’re happy with the shade.
- Fit the piping nozzles to the bags then fill each one with the colored frosting.
- When the cake is cool, remove it from the baking pan and set it in front of you. Pipe swirls, rosettes, rounds, squiggles and stars all over the top of the cake. We started with the larger rosettes and went from there. Alternate between each color of frosting to add visual interest and use the smallest piping nozzle to fill in any gaps.
Notes
The key to the most perfect texture is to bake the cake in a low oven, this ensures a slow and steady rise and stops the cake from collapsing or developing any cracks, which in turn makes it much easier to decorate.
When coloring buttercream, it’s best to use gel food coloring as it is very strong and you won’t need much; therefore, the vanilla flavor of the cake is not affected. We opted for 5 pastel colors for a spring feel, but you can use any combination of colors you have on hand. This works with 1 or 2 colors or more than 5.
As we had 5 colors, we used 5 different piping nozzles, but if you don’t have many, you can use a couple and vary the pressure when you decorate, which will result in a different pattern.
Think of the cake as your canvas, and you are the artist! We started with the 1M to make bigger rosettes and then moved onto the 6B to pipe swirls. Next, we added squiggly lines with the 104 and used the 1A and 363 nozzles to fill the gaps. Decorating a cake like this is so much fun; you can go to town and create your own masterpiece!
Storage: This Floral Cake will keep for at least 5 days in a container in the fridge. It
freezes really well for up to 1 month.
freezes really well for up to 1 month.
