Having made some buttercream floras and leaves, I couldn’t wait for use them, so I baked a vanilla cake as the base for my buttercream decorations. The piping tutorial is on thecakeblog.
Of course, my skills are way amateur, but it’s a start! Here is the recipe for the vanilla cake.
(Makes a 2 layer 7 inch cake)
Ingredients
For the cake
Dry Ingredients
- 230g cake flour
- 250g castor sugar
- 1.5 tsp baking powder
- pinch of salt
Wet Ingredients
- 225g unsalted butter at room temperature
- 75g sour cream
- 60ml milk
- 3 eggs
- 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
For the Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Click on link above
For the Buttercream Decorations (refer to link above)
Method
- Line the bottom of the cake tins and preheat the oven at 165 degrees.
- Sift the flour, salt and baking powder together and set aside.
- Cream the sugar and the butter till light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time, whisking to combine before adding the next.
- Fold the flour in 3 additions, alternating with the sour cream and the milk and ending with flour. Meaning, flour, half of cream and milk, flour, rest of cream and milk and ending with flour. Add the vanilla extract and whisk to combine.
- Pour batter into prepared cake tins. I used 2 cake tins because I didn’t want the hassle of cutting the cake into 2 layers.
- Bake in preheated oven for about 40 minutes, checking by inserting a skewer into the middle of the cake and if it comes out clean, the cake is cooked.
- Leave to cool completely.
- Crumb coat the cake with SMBC and leave to chill in fridge for about 20 minutes.
- Frost the whole cake and decorate as desired. I used the SMBC floras and leaves of course.
I think the buttercream flowers and leaves are great decoration ideas and I froze the remaining ones for future use.
