So a baking craving came over me on Tuesday evening and I decided to just go with it. I’ve been dying to try out one of those ombre effect cakes for a while (which had to have been adapted from the ever popular “rainbow” layer cake) and couldn’t put it off any longer! Initially I wanted to go with a pink (the natural choice for me) ombre cake, but turns out I only had a tiny bit of red food coloring left in my supplies, so instead I went with a pretty blue cake since I really wasn’t feeling a green confection.
I whipped together a recipe for a vanilla “wedding” cake as my base. I divided the batter between four bowls (since I simply couldn’t bring myself to make a six layer cake
that evening) and used my food coloring to tint each batch. I put ten drops of blue in the “darkest” bowl, six drops in the second darkest, three in the third darkest and only one drop of coloring for the “lightest” batter. At this point my bottom three layer colors were looking VERY similar and I was afraid that they wouldn’t end up giving me that amazing dark to light effect that looks so amazing. At that point I had already put in the time for the homemade batter, so I trucked along. Unfortunately I only have two round cake pans so I had to do these layers in two rounds. I went with the darkest two first and the lightest two following the other layer’s cooling process. If you’re like me and have to bake your layers in two rounds, I would actually suggest baking the darkest layers first since they are your “base” layers and will be the coolest they can possibly be when it comes time for you to assemble everything….they need to be sturdy for sure!
Once my layers came out of the oven I was still skeptical. Because of the browning of the edges (see in the photo what I am talking about?!) I couldn’t really see the their true colors, althou
gh the tops gave me a slight idea and things were looking pretty good. I gave the layers time to cool in the pan and then put them in the fridge/freezer.
While my second round of layers were baking, I put together the frosting. I ended up just using a regular vanilla buttercream frosting because I wanted the cake to be completely white with the surprise of the colored layers inside. I whipped up the butter, little bit of milk, confectioners sugar and vanilla into a giant batch of sugary goodness.
When all of the layers were sufficiently cooled I stacked them up according to their shade and started the filling process. First up, piping
around the layer so that I could add a thin filling of raspberry jam and an overall crumb coat. Success. I put the cake in the fridge to set that layer of icing.
I started to prepare my other half of frosting for the actual "decoration" phase. Since my layers were blue, I also included a little bit of blue in the frosting on the outside of the cake...as a bit of a hint to what was inside. I also did a fun design on the top of the cake, but can't show you because it had something to do with something going on at my office (I decided rather than feasting on this cake all by myself, I would bring it in to share with some of my co-workers)...oh, but how I WISH SO BADLY I could show you! Sorry for covering it up, it really was sooooo pretty (believe me)! Someday I will share it with you! :)
Another trip into the fridge and my cake was complete!! The next day (yesterday) I brought the cake into the office for everyone to enjoy. When that first slice was made I was nervous to see how my baking turned out and if the ombre effect was really there....guess what....IT WAS! A total baking success - and all of my coworkers said the cake was delic
ious. About an hour later I went back to the kitchen to see how much was left and my creation was completely demolished...only crumbs on the plate!
I've really only ever made one or two layer cakes, but this cake turned out AMAZING. Everything from the layers to the way that I iced the cake...it all came together and looked beautiful (at least I thought so!) I will definitely make this style cake again! Slicing into the cake is definitely the best part...oh, and of course, the way it tastes!
If you want to recreate this cake, it's super simple: You can make a from scratch vanilla cake or a boxed vanilla cake (I went with from scratch), use gel food colors, frost it with vanilla buttercream (I used a recipe I found online) and you can use plain old raspberry jam (I used some Sarabeth's jam from the grocery store) for the "filling"!
Questions? Email me at positivelypreppyinpink@gmail.com!
Happy Baking!
I whipped together a recipe for a vanilla “wedding” cake as my base. I divided the batter between four bowls (since I simply couldn’t bring myself to make a six layer cake
that evening) and used my food coloring to tint each batch. I put ten drops of blue in the “darkest” bowl, six drops in the second darkest, three in the third darkest and only one drop of coloring for the “lightest” batter. At this point my bottom three layer colors were looking VERY similar and I was afraid that they wouldn’t end up giving me that amazing dark to light effect that looks so amazing. At that point I had already put in the time for the homemade batter, so I trucked along. Unfortunately I only have two round cake pans so I had to do these layers in two rounds. I went with the darkest two first and the lightest two following the other layer’s cooling process. If you’re like me and have to bake your layers in two rounds, I would actually suggest baking the darkest layers first since they are your “base” layers and will be the coolest they can possibly be when it comes time for you to assemble everything….they need to be sturdy for sure!Once my layers came out of the oven I was still skeptical. Because of the browning of the edges (see in the photo what I am talking about?!) I couldn’t really see the their true colors, althou
gh the tops gave me a slight idea and things were looking pretty good. I gave the layers time to cool in the pan and then put them in the fridge/freezer.While my second round of layers were baking, I put together the frosting. I ended up just using a regular vanilla buttercream frosting because I wanted the cake to be completely white with the surprise of the colored layers inside. I whipped up the butter, little bit of milk, confectioners sugar and vanilla into a giant batch of sugary goodness.
When all of the layers were sufficiently cooled I stacked them up according to their shade and started the filling process. First up, piping
around the layer so that I could add a thin filling of raspberry jam and an overall crumb coat. Success. I put the cake in the fridge to set that layer of icing.I started to prepare my other half of frosting for the actual "decoration" phase. Since my layers were blue, I also included a little bit of blue in the frosting on the outside of the cake...as a bit of a hint to what was inside. I also did a fun design on the top of the cake, but can't show you because it had something to do with something going on at my office (I decided rather than feasting on this cake all by myself, I would bring it in to share with some of my co-workers)...oh, but how I WISH SO BADLY I could show you! Sorry for covering it up, it really was sooooo pretty (believe me)! Someday I will share it with you! :)
Another trip into the fridge and my cake was complete!! The next day (yesterday) I brought the cake into the office for everyone to enjoy. When that first slice was made I was nervous to see how my baking turned out and if the ombre effect was really there....guess what....IT WAS! A total baking success - and all of my coworkers said the cake was delic
ious. About an hour later I went back to the kitchen to see how much was left and my creation was completely demolished...only crumbs on the plate!I've really only ever made one or two layer cakes, but this cake turned out AMAZING. Everything from the layers to the way that I iced the cake...it all came together and looked beautiful (at least I thought so!) I will definitely make this style cake again! Slicing into the cake is definitely the best part...oh, and of course, the way it tastes!
If you want to recreate this cake, it's super simple: You can make a from scratch vanilla cake or a boxed vanilla cake (I went with from scratch), use gel food colors, frost it with vanilla buttercream (I used a recipe I found online) and you can use plain old raspberry jam (I used some Sarabeth's jam from the grocery store) for the "filling"!
Questions? Email me at positivelypreppyinpink@gmail.com!
Happy Baking!
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