Sunday, October 9, 2011

Beautiful Butterfly Cake

My close friend Rebecca's daughter Zoe turned four this week and she was very keen to have a butterfly cake for her fairy themed party.  Apart from the butterfly shape, my brief was to keep the colours bright and girly, but the decorations were completely up to me. Love these kinds of projects! Here's how it came out:


And here is how I made it:

I used the cake recipe from this post for the cake, which is a simple vanilla cake. For an extra girly touch, I marbled pink through the cake. Once I mixed the batter, I took poured about a quarter of it into a seperate bowl and tinted it pink with food colouring.


I used the Wilton Butterfly tin I hired from my local cake decorating shop, greased it and filled it with the vanilla cake mix.


I spooned the pink mixture over the top -


Then used the back of a spoon to gently stir the pink mix through the vanilla mix to create the marble effect. Only stir gently though - you don't want the colours to mix too much or the marbling won't show once it is baked.


(Keeping it real shot there - see my little helper's hand there in the picture:) )

These types of cake tins are great - they are embossed so once the cake is baked and turned out, the cake has the pattern imprinted on it making decorating easy. Speaking of easy, I like to keep these types of projects quick and simple, and I have to really with a 2.5 year old and a 5 month old. So Betty Crocker ready made icing is my secret weapon!


Here is the work in progress - I tinted the icing yellow, purple and pink using gel food colourings. Gel colourings are much better than liquid, the colours are stronger and you don't need as much. For the decorating I spread the yellow around the edges with a thin metal spatula, used a piping bag with a no.3 tip for the outlining, and a no. 21 star tip for filling the wings with colour and creating the outline around the cake's base.

To embellish I used white heart shaped lollies (similar to runts) and mini m&ms.

The birthday girl was thrilled! And I was pretty pleased with how it came out too. :)



8 comments:

  1. Can't believe you made this yourself! Looks Great! Thanks for linking to Things I've Done Thursday.

    Melanie
    bearrabbitbear.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Looks great! I love how you marbled the pink into the cake; what a fun surprise! Would you consider linking up at my 'think pink' party?

    http://oneartmama.blogspot.com/2011/10/welcome-to-week-6-of-falling-for-crafts.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. so pretty. Good job. Thank you so much sharing and for linking up to our party Show and Share this week! Come on back this Wednesday to link up your current projects.

    A mommy's life...with a touch of YELLOW
    tyandwhitneyulrich.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Roslyn I made the butterfly cake using the Diamond Anniversary Cupcake recipe however I had to guess the oven tempurature and cooking time. Can you please post the required temperature and baking time?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi there, good luck, you will have to send me a picture when you are done! If you use the same tin, I would suggest baking for about 40 minutes from memory, but keep your eye on it until it is golden in colour and the middle is firm to the touch and springs back. I bake at 180C (350F)

      Hope that helps, feel free to send me an email if you have anymore questions - roslynruss{at}gmail{dot}com

      Delete
    2. Thanks Roslyn. :) I used a 30 cm butterfly tin ( not Wilton). I will be decorating with fruit & cream, nothing too fancy. Im baking for my daughter's 1st birthday. :)

      Delete
  5. Thank you so much for your help, much appreciated! :) Wish me luck Im baking for my

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sorry Roslyn Im having problems posting.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for your comments - I adore hearing from you! I love to reply personally via email so if your email isn't visible in your profile feel free to leave it in your message so I can get in touch!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...