How To: Ombre Buttercream Cake

Last weekend I went to baby shower for one of our church ladies who is shifting to Auckland (opposite end of NZ) with her family next week. Yes. All the cry face emojis! Anyway, this lady is the best cake maker I know (see her stuff here) and somehow I got given the job of making the cake. Pressure! I made two chocolate cakes in 25cm round tins. To stop them turning into an alpine peak, I fold a wet tea towel into a big strip and tie around the tin. This stops the edges from cooking faster than the middle, allowing the cake to rise evenly. Once cool, I levelled the cakes my slicing off the tops. I gave the cakes a light skim coat of plain buttercream to begin with.

My Buttercream Recipe:

500g softened butter
1kg icing sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
milk

Beat the butter by itself until smooth. Slowly add icing sugar, adding milk to even the consistency. Add vanilla essence. The perfect buttercream should be quite sticky and firm. For this cake I used an open 8 star piping tip. For quite a while I struggled to find piping tips that were big enough for cupcakes and cakes. I found this set at Bed Bath and Beyond a while ago and it has been the best!The most frustrating thing about this cake is that you have pipe the darkest colour first, meaning you have to guess how much buttercream you think you’ll need for each colour. Ideally, you would pipe the lightest colour first, gradually making the buttercream darker until you finish the cake. This cake was supposed to have more of a gradient, but I made far too much of the darkest colour and had to attempt to lighten the remaining buttercream with extra icing sugar. Then I just rolled with out. I use these AmeriColor gels to colour both buttercream and fondant. They have amazing vibrant colours and a little goes a very long way. Okay, so once you fill your piping bag, you want to push down the icing to the tip. I do a few straight strokes on my bench first to make sure that there are no air bubbles trapped in the bag. Practice doing some swirls first. Starting at the outside, and going around the inside, forming a spiral. Once you get to the middle, ease off the pressure and pull your piping bag away. Decide how many rows of spirals you think will fit down the side of your cake (I chose 3) and adjust the size of your spirals accordingly. When doing this style, the most important thing to remember, is to start your spiral in a gap. You can overlap previous rows in order to make sure all the area is covered. Continue piping spirals until you get to the top edge. I decided to to the top of the cake all one colour. Again, I worked around the cake, filling in all the gaps until I got to the centre. For this cake I decided I wanted to add a bit of a sparkle to it using this metallic food paint. I used a regular paint brush to highlight some of the edges of each spiral. I did this about half an hour after I had finished the piping, so the edges had hardened.To complete the cake I made some mini bunting flags using string, kebab sticks and some brown paper. I think it made it just a little bit more party ready, don’t you?