Good morning everyone! It is a fine day here in Vancouver. I got up at 5.30am and went to the gym. Because I wanted today to be super productive because I don't start work till 6pm. I just have a list growing and growing in my diary of jobs and work I need to do I decided I am getting towards the end of my week I should get a kick start on it before my days off approach.
I find if I get up early in the morning and go work out, I come back to the apartment so refreshed and ready to tackle some blogging or editing. So I ensured I went to bed early last night when I got home from work so that I wouldn't sleep in. It is 9.15am and I am drinking a raspberry, strawberry and chia smoothie and eating a homemade gronola bar. The day is off to a good start.
Today I have for you this beautiful cake,
It is rather simple then most of my cakes because this was one of the first cakes I sold in my business. I was so happy with how it turned out.
It is a buttermilk cake with cream cheese frosting and garnished with chocolate petals for the trees branches.
I love the simple design of this cake yet it is still very effective. It also looks very complicated but it really isn't, you just need a bit of time on your hands (like most of my cakes) to spend on making all the different coloured petals.
To make the petals, I melted down white chocolate and divided it between as many bowls as colours I wanted. Then I used chocolate powder colouring. Ensure it is chocolate colouring because you cannot use regular food colouring because it has water in the colouring which will seize your chocolate.
I then mixed all the colours in the bowls and transferred it to piping bags and began piping small/medium/big dots on pieces of parchment paper. Alternating colours and sizes to the petals. Then grab a regular butter knife and drag the knife through the dots and flick it off at the end to give it a petal look.
Then I just used regular buttercream which I coloured brown and placed in a piping bag with a star nozzle and piped a tree trunk and branches. Next time I think I would probably make the trunk of the tree a lot thicker because it kind of looks silly how the trunk of the tree is the same size as the branches coming off the tree.
Mixing the colours when changing piping bags I think gives it a cool effect and saves you time not having to wash out the bag everytime you want to change colour.
Then I just wanted to keep all the icing and piping simple on the rest of the cake because the tree is the main focus. So I just did a simple smooth icing on the sides and a small spiral effect on top which I think ties the whole cake together nicely.
I decided to use pastel colours because I think it looks a lot more appealing to eye. I find you can get nicer shades of the colours you want to use if you use pastel. For instance nice greens and blues if they are pastel.
So if you want to learn how to make this tasty cake, keep scrolling for the recipes..
Recipe:
Chocolate Rainbow Tree Cake
Vanilla Buttermilk Cake:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
225g softened unsalted butter
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 1/3 cup caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla paste
6 eggs room temperature
1 1/3 cup buttermilk
Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Prepare four 18cm tins, greased and lined.
Place butter, coconut oil, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and begin mixing the mixture.
Add eggs one at a time, mixing well between additions.
Slowly add the flour mixture (1 cup at a time) to the butter creamed mixture.
Slowly add your buttermilk in small increments alternating with flour and buttermilk until all is well combined.
Pour equal amounts in greased cakes tins, and smooth the tops.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer is inserted and only a couple crumbs cling to it.
Allow cakes to cool on a wire rack and turn them out of their cake tin.
Cream Cheese Frosting:
Rainbow Chocolate Petals:
350g white chocolate, melted
6 different chocolate colours
(the colours you use to colour you chocolate must be chocolate colouring, not food colouring because food colouring has water in it, which will seize your chocolate.
Method:
Evenly divide your chocolate into 6 separate bowls, colour all the 6 different bowls different colours.
Mix until the colour is well distributed and a uniform colour.
Place the different coloured melted chocolate into piping bags and pipe little dollops of chocolate onto a rectangle tray lined with baking paper.
With the back your knife dip it in the dollop of chocolate and swipe it out to give it a petal like look.
The beauty of this decorating technique is they don't all need to look exactly the same.
You just need multiple petals to really pull off this decorating effect.
Once the chocolate petals have dried you can remove them from the baking paper and gather them to one side of the tray.
Assembly:
Perform your usual routine of layering a cake and giving the cake a crumb coat. Allow it to set in the fridge.
Pull the cake out and begin your final frosting on the cake. On top, with the tip of a palette knife, swirl your knife around in a spiral.
With some cream cheese frosting, coloured brown place into a piping bag with a star nozzle.
Pipe a tree trunk and begin sticking your petals everywhere on this cake.
The more petals you have the more magical it is going to look!
Wooh la! One of my favourite cakes, so simplest so effective,
xx
