Happy Birthday to me! Not only am I happy that I can officially put my teenage years behind me, but I finally had a reason to make this beautiful ombré cake! Throughout my explorations on food blogs, I stumbled across Beantown Baker’s wonderful blog to find her creation of this cake. Honestly, it was love at first site (and at first bite as well). I immediately saved the link to my favorites to use later.

So my original intent was to make a vanilla cake with a delicious and tart lemon filling topped with the buttercream rosettes. Unfortunately, my home town was hit pretty hard by Hurricane Sandy and I had very limited resources. I am completely stocked with all my baking essentials but due to not having power I was lacking eggs. And man, did I search! I went to five supermarkets all of which had no stock of eggs, so this is where my task of making an eggless cake began. On a much happier note though, we were lucky enough to get power back the day before my birthday which gave me so much glee, I was able to bake my birthday cake! It was almost as good of a gift as the new Olympus Pen E-PL2 my parents got me for my 20th! Almost…because I have to admit, this camera is pretty sweet!

This cake looks quite intimidating, but don’t let that stop you from trying! Anyone with basic knowledge of piping techniques will find that this cake is a breeze to put together. It took me roughly 20 minutes to tint the frosting, put in the bags and pipe onto the cake! Check out how easy it is to make the rosettes and the bottom of the blog post!! This style of piping is very forgiving when mistakes are made. You can easily swipe the rosettes off with a knife if you need a quick redo. Impress your family and friends with this stunning work of art, and you don’t need to tell them how easy it is 😉

Ombré Cake

Yields: 16 servings

Ingredients:

• 4 batches of Eggless White Cake
• 2.5 batches of Buttercream Frosting
• Food coloring

Special Supplies Needed:

• Piping Bags
• 1M Wilton Star Tip

Directions:

For the Cake:

1. It is recommended making each layer in separate bowls. With each layer, add a few drops of food coloring (use about 5 for the lightest layer and about 20 for the darkest layer). The idea is to get each layer to be gradient, so work slowly, more is less.
2. Bake the cakes, only two layers at a time. Allow the cakes to cool completely.

Assembling the Cakes:

1. Once all the layers have cooled completely, level each of the cakes. You can do this by using a cake leveler or a serrated knife. Center the darkest layer on the cake board. If using a filling  pipe a small ring around the edge of the cake. This will ensure no filling will spill out between layers. If not using a filling, spoon about  1/3 cup of frosting and spread to the edges. Repeat using the next darkest cake until fully stacked.
2. Frost the cake with a crumb coat and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

Decorating the Cake:

With your piping bag at a perpendicular angle to your surface, apply a small amount of pressure with one fluid motion swoop the bag around the center ‘star’

1. Using three separate bowls, place 1 cup of frosting in two, and 1.5 cups in another. The bowl with the most frosting will be your lightest color.
2. Add food coloring to that bowl first until the desired color is reached. Color the other two bowls of frosting until you have three coherent shades of gradient frosting. Fill your piping bag with the darkest shade of frosting fixed with the 1M tip.
3. Place the cake on a rotating cake stand, if you have one. Starting at the bottom, pipe a row of roses along the cake that covers about 1/3 the height of the cake.
4. Continue with the second row of roses in the next lighter shade of frosting, placing the roses directly above the bottom layer.
5. Finish with the last row or roses in the lightest shade of frosting. Next, decorate the top of the cake by piping a rose in the center of the top of the cake. Work your way around the top of the cake. If there’s any large spaces between the roses, you can pipe small stars to fill the space in.