pink and white floral wreath cake

It's been a while since my last post! Things have been super busy with work, and then summer with the kids at home, and then vacation, and then after vacation watching the kids while I worked from home until school started ... and now the kids are back in school! It's an exciting year because my oldest started middle school! And my youngest started Kindergarten! Time sure does fly by fast!

Anyhow, back to this cake! I made this for my friend Kim, for her birthday last March, at at time when I was absolutely obsessed with floral wreath cakes! (You'll see several more in the next few upcoming posts!) This one happened to be a coffee chiffon cake, filled with espresso whipped cream, and covered with vanilla whipped cream.

The coffee chiffon layers were baked in three 6-inch round cake pans. Usually I bake two cakes and then slice the in half horizontally to give me four layers, but since chiffon cake is so delicate, I find that they tend to collapse when sliced in half horizontally, so I do three uncut cake layers instead.

After smoothing out my whipped cream frosting as best as I could, I was ready to decorate with buttercream flowers. Unlike this mother's day floral wreath cake, where I piped rosette flowers directly onto the cake, I used this method instead, where I piped my buttercream flowers in advance using a flower nail and pieces of waxed paper. The buttercream flowers are then frozen until I'm ready to use them!

Rather than just adding my pre-piped buttercream flowers directly onto the top of the cake, I first piped a ring of whipped cream dollops on the top, so that I could nestle my flowers easily and position, also allowing them to stay on better. Then I just peeled each flower off of the waxed paper, and placed them in a wreath around the cake.

Once I was happy with my flower placement, I finished it off by piping green buttercream leaves in between and around the flowers.

I love this technique!

This technique allows you to use the best of all the dozens of piped buttercream flowers, and if you work quickly enough you can even move the flowers around before they start to melt.

I especially love the view from the top of the cake, where you can see the flowers in wreath formation.

Happy Birthday, Kim! Hope you enjoyed your cake!

Stay tuned to see more wreath cakes in the next few posts!

matcha green tea ruffle cake

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, this green cake would be perfect! (Especially since it kind of resembles a head of cabbage!) But actually, I didn't make this for St. Patrick's Day, I made it for my coworker Kim, who loves anything green tea! For the past few years I've been baking her green tea birthday cakes. Last year's was this green tea rose cake, and she liked it so much that I thought I'd make it for her again this year! But this time instead of piped roses, I decided to do a ruffle cake piped to resemble one large flower!

The green tea cake is a chiffon-style batter, with whipped egg whites to lighten it, and plenty of green tea powder to give a strong green tea flavor.

I baked my batter in two 8-inch cake pans, and once cooled I made a large batch of freshly whipped cream, which I then flavored with a paste made of green tea powder mixed with hot water.

Then I filled my cake layers, and covered the tops and sides of my cake with the whipped cream.

Then came the fun part - piping the ruffles! I used a Wilton #104 petal tip and started my ruffles in the center of the cake, using my turning cake stand to turn the cake while I piped.

Then I just kept piping ...

... and piping, until I had covered the top of the cake with petals. 

At this point, I thought it looked quite pretty, and considered stopping and leaving it as is. I really liked the look of the ruffles on top of the cake with the straight sides.

But then I decided that I needed to keep going with my original plan to pipe ruffles all over the entired cake!

I'm so glad that I did, because the finished the cake came out so pretty! So girly, frilly and ruffly!





Hope you enjoyed the cake, Kim! Happy Birthday!

matcha green tea rose cake with whipped cream frosting

Two years ago I made my coworker Kim this matcha green tea Hello Kitty tiramisu cake (I didn't have a chance to make her a cake last year, since I was on maternity leave with my third baby at the time!), and since I know she loves anything green tea, I decided to make her another green tea cake this year!

This time I decided on a green tea chiffon cake that I've made in the past (see here and here), except that I wanted to decorate it with piped roses. This is one of my favorite ways to frost cakes, and I've done it many times (purple, purple ombre, white red velvet cheesecake, orange pumpkin spice, pink ombre), but the orirginal tutorial can be found here at I Am Baker. :)

For the chiffon cake, I began by separating my eggs and whipping the egg whites until stiff peaks formed.

Then in a separate bowl, I mixed the egg yolks, oil, and sugar, before adding cake flour, matcha green tea powder, baking powder, and salt.

Finally I gently folded in my whipped egg whites, for a fluffy green tea batter. Then I divided the batter between two 8-inch pans (ungreased, and simply lined with parchment paper).

I baked them at 350F for 20 minutes, and let them cool (with the pans upside down, in order to help keep the volume of the chiffon cake).

While they were cooling, I made a batch of freshly whipped cream, lightly sweetened with confectioner's sugar, and then added a paste of green tea powder mixed with hot water. I used this to fill and frost my cooled cake layers.

After smoothing out the top and sides of the cake with an offset spatula, I was ready to pipe my roses using a Wilton 1M tip.

I had intended on piping roses on the top of the cake as well, but I ran out of the whipped cream mixture! So roses on only the sides would have to do!

I brought the cake to work the next day, and we scheduled a "fake meeting" so that we could surprise Kim with the birthday cake!

Happy Birthday, Kim! Hope you enjoyed the cake!

hello kitty matcha green tea tiramisu cake

My coworker Kim loves anything green tea, and while I wasn't able to make her a cake last year (since I was on maternity leave from work), I made her this Hello Kitty shaped green tea cake the year before. (Yes, this post is two years late!)

I made pretty much the same components that I had made for this Hello Kitty tiramisu cake, such as the same vanilla cake, and the same method of cutting out the Hello Kitty shape and layering the components.

Except that I made a matcha green tea syrup of the espresso syrup.

Which also meant making the green tea mascarpone filling instead of an espresso mascarpone filling.

After adding a second set of vanilla cake, green tea syrup, and mascarpone layers, I dusted the top with green tea powder (instead of cocoa powder).

Then I let it set overnight before unmolding it.

While the cake had great green tea flavor, I think it would have been better had I used the green tea chiffon cake that I made here and here. The more green tea flavor, the better!

Stay tuned to see the cake that I made for Kim this year!