camouflage rose birthday cake - vanilla cake filled with lilikoi cream

For my husband's birthday this year, I made another camouflage inspired cake (surprise surprise!), as I typically do every year. I had recently been experimenting with multi-colored piped roses while making a unicorn cake for my daughter's birthday, so I thought for hubby's birthday it would be fun to do multi-colored piped roses in camouflage colors!

My husband is from Hawaii, so lilikoi (passionfruit) is a favorite flavor of his. On my mother-in-law's last visit, she had brought fresh lilikoi pulp, which she had frozen, seeds and all. So I decided to use a bit of this in his birthday cake!

After baking up two 6-inch round vanilla cakes (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), I let them cool and then sliced them in half horizontally, giving me four cake layers. Then I made a small batch of fresh whipped cream, sweetened with powdered sugar and a bit of vanilla extract, and added several tablespoons of the strained lilikoi pulp (seeds discarded). I also brushed each cake layer with a bit of lilikoi juice, just to amp up the lilikoi flavor, before filling it with the lilikoi whipped cream.

Once the cake was filled and assembled, I used whipped up a batch of buttercream frosting to cover the top and sides of the cake. (Just a quick crumb coat - at this point it didn't have to be perfect, since I would be covering it with piped roses later on.)

Then I tinted a third of the remaining frosting brown, a third green, and left the final third white. I used a bit of each color to fill my piping bag, which was already fitted with a large star tip.

Then I proceeded to pipe rosettes along the sides of the cake.

I finished by piping rosettes to fill the top of the cake as well, and filled in the gap with little swoops and curls.

I thought it turned out pretty cute!





And I could definitely see myself doing the multi-colored rosettes in a variety of colors!

Happy Birthday, my love! Hope you enjoyed your cake! :)

camouflage inspired polka dot birthday cake

I usually make my husband some sort of camouflage inspired cake for his birthday, and last year was no exception! I had seen a fondant polka dot cake on Sweet and Saucy's instagram account, and I thought it would be so cute in camouflage colors, but with the polka dots done with frosting instead of fondant!

I baked up four 6-inch layers of fluffy chiffon cake, which I let cool while I prepared the filling. My husband is from Hawaii and has fond memories of eating freshly picked lychee from his grandmother's tree, so I decided to make him a cake with lychee filling. Unfortunately, fresh lychee is hard to find over here, so I had to use canned lychee, which I let drain over a strainer while I whipped up some fresh whipped cream. Then I chopped up the lychee into little pieces.

Once all the components were ready, I assembled the cake. I filled each layer of chiffon cake with freshly whipped cream, which I smoothed out with a spatula, then chopped lychee, and then more whipped cream on top before adding the next cake layer.

For the frosting, I whipped up a quick batch of cream cheese buttercream, and frosted the top and sides of the cake with it. (I typically frost my cakes with a quick crumb coat, let it set in the fridge for 30 minutes, and then frost it with a final coat, with I smooth out with an offset spatula).

Then it was time to pipe my polka dots! I divided the remaining frosting into four small bowls and colored them black, brown, dark green, and light green. Then I used disposable pastry bags fitted with medium round tips, and started randomly piping different colored blobs of polka dots.

While it started out looking really ugly, I kept piping polka dots and eventually I wound up with a kinda cute cake!

I still think I like the petaled camo cake the best though! ;)

Stay tuned to see how this year's cake will turn out!

ombre watercolor camouflage inspired cake

The past few years, I've always made some sort of camouflage cake for my husband Grant's birthday every year. Such as this camouflage petal cake, or this pom pom camouflage cake, as well as this piped shells camouflage cake (which by the way, was also had a camouflage surprise, inside the cake!). This year I wanted to do something simple, and since I recently fell in love with this watercolor cake by Sweetapolita, I decided to make a camouflage-inspired watercolor cake!

I had also recently made this vanilla cake with fresh blueberries and lemon whipped cream, and decided to make it again for the inside of the cake. So I baked up two 6-inch vanilla cake layers (half batch of the vanilla cake recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), and divided each layer in half horizontally, giving me four layers. Then I whipped up a batch of freshly whipped cream, flavored with fresh lemon zest and lemon juice, and filled each layer with the lemon whipped cream and fresh blueberries.

Next, I made my camouflage colors - I divided the remaining whipped cream into thirds, left one portion white, tinted the second portion green, and the third portion brown. Then using an offset spatula, I covered the top third of my cake with white whipped cream, the middle third with green whipped cream, and the bottom third with brown whipped cream.

Then I smooth it all out (a long metal spatula and a rotating cake stand works great for this!).

I loved it! Simple, rustic, and camouflage-ish.

And the inside! So cute with the dots of fresh blueberries.

Happy Birthday, my Love! Hope you enjoyed yet another camouflage cake on your special day! :)

piped shells camouflage cake

I've been making camourflage cakes for my husband's birthday the past couple of years (see here and here), and this year I intended to make another one! But I was running out of designs! So I took inspiration from the piped shell birthday cake that I made for my youngest baby's first birthday this year, and made camouflage out of different colors of piped shells (except that I piped the shells in a different direction)!

I also wanted camouflage on the inside of the cake this time, so I made half a batch my favorite vanilla cake batter (recipe in my new book!), divided it, and colored the batter green and brown, leaving the third portion white.

Then I alternated colors when dropping the batter into my 6-inch prepared cake pans.

Once baked and cooled, I whipped up a batch of fresh whipped cream (recipe also in my new book!), and piped a layer in between the cakes.

Then I covered the entire top and sides with whipped cream. At this point, it didn't have to be perfectly smooth, as I was going to pipe camouflage shells all over the outside!

I divided the remaining whipped cream, and colored the portions green, brown, and black. Then I used a Wilton #21 tip to pipe vertical shells in randomly alternating colors. (For the sides of the cake, I piped the shells from top to bottom, and for the top of the cake I piped the shells from the outside towards the center).

And here's the finished cake!

I especially loved the way the top of the cake turns out - the piped shells made a beautiful pattern.

And for the inside of the cake!

Cute little swirls of camouflage :)

Happy Birthday, my love!

camouflage pom pom cake

For my husband Grant's birthday last year, I made him this camouflage petal birthday cake.  I had wanted to make him a "manly" cake, but I guess the term "petal cake" isn't so manly!  This year I decided to make him another camouflage cake, this time using a "pom pom" effect that I saw on here on Pinterest, which eventually led me to this I Am Baker cake!  Even though the term "pom pom" isn't exactly "manly" either, I had the idea in my head and I couldn't shake it.  So I bought a bunch of Wilton grass tips and I was on my way!

I started by baking a 6-inch vanilla cake, and 6-inch chocolate cake.  After they had cooled, I sliced them in half horizontally with a serrated knife.  Then I whipped up a big batch of fresh whipped cream.  I took a portion of the whipped cream and mixed it with chopped Oreo cookies, and used that to fill the cakes.

First I placed a layer of chocolate cake on my cake round, then piped a layer of the Oreo whipped cream and smoothed it out with an offset spatula.  Then came a layer of vanilla cake, followed by more Oreo whipped cream, then another layer of chocolate cake, more Oreo whipped cream, and then finally the last layer of vanilla cake.

After covering the cake in a quick crumb coat of the whipped cream, I divided the rest of the frosting into portions to be colored brown, black, green, and olive drab green.  As with last year's cake, I used cocoa powder to help color the brown and black frosting in order to minimize the amount of food coloring I was using.

Once the frosting was colored, I fitted my piping bags with my new grass tips and filled the bags with the different colors of frosting.  And then I started piping my pom poms!

As I was piping away, several of the pom poms came out looking like messy blobs.  It could have been because my frosting was getting too soft, or because the tips were getting clogged, or because I was using whipped cream for frosting!  But I only had a limited amount of time, with a three-month old newborn at home, and a husband and our other two kids who were about to come home to an unfinished cake!  So I kept piping away, trying to clear my piping tip and cool down my frosting in the fridge as often as I could.

Although the cake turned out messier than I would have liked, it still tasted delicious with it's cookies-n-cream goodness!

Happy birthday, my love!