Prim & Practical: Ruffles & Roses CAKE

I stumbled across this great blog the other day, I am Baker. She posts great ideas and How To's for cakes and other desserts. And I thought...

"I should try to make one of these cakes! Then, I can just make the cake for Kristen's Baby Shower myself!"

Perfect! (Well, almost... since I've never made a "fancy" cake like this ever in my life. But how hard could it be???)

It really wasn't that hard, but I like to say that it is a "Rustic" Ruffles & Roses Cake. This lets all the imperfections be on purpose. Plus, Rustic is "In" right now!

Here is my HOW TO, if you want to try to make this yourself! Oh, and by the way, the inside of the cake has vertical stripes!

I used 2 Boxed Cakes - Red Velvet and Yellow Cake, (to make the cakes more dense, I added an extra egg, 1/2 cup oil, and pudding powder(only to red velvet, the yellow cake already had pudding in the mix.)

The boxes each make 2 - 8 inch cakes, so you will end up with four cakes. Once the cakes are finished, pop them out of the pans immediately and stack the like cakes on top of each other. Then put the cakes in the freezer for at least 5 hours.

I baked mine the night before and put them in the freezer overnight. This makes them so much easier to cut later on.

To make the vertical stripes, I used a cake round and drew circles on it about an inch apart.

Then cut out each circle and use a sharp knife to cut the cake into rings using the circle pieces as a guide.

Next, cut through the outer three circles from the middle to the outer edge and separate the pieces. Then you will alternate wrapping the different cake circles around each other.

Wrap cake in wax paper, and tie closed (I used an old towel). Pour a few spoonfuls of simple syrup over the cake to keep it moist and bind the cakes together. Freeze the cake again for an hour or so, or just while you make the frosting.

Now you get to make the frosting! Yummy! I am not a frosting kind of person, but I kept eating this frosting the entire decorating process. (Oopsie!)

Frosting Recipe:

1/2 cup of butter flavored shortening (or regular, but I think the butter flavor tastes better!)

1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla (Mexican vanilla is what I use. It's my Mother In Laws secret to amazing frosting!)

4 cups of powdered sugar

5 or 6 tablespoons of milk

Cream Shortening and vanilla, slowly add powdered sugar a cup at a time with a tablespoon of milk at a time until it is the right consistency for you. (Not too runny and not too stiff.)

The next step is to crumb coat your cake. It's ok if this isn't perfect because you are covering it with ruffles and roses! I then put it back in the freezer for just a bit while I made some more frosting for the outer decorations!

To make the ruffles you use a #104 tip on your icing bag, make sure the larger end of the tip is towards the cake and the smaller end is out to you and move back and forth up the cake making ruffles.

(I practiced on wax paper before, but I was impatient and just went to the cake. That's why some of my ruffles are crooked! Oh well, it's "Rustic" remember!)