Green and White Christmas Lambeth Cake

An elegant green and white Christmas Lambeth cake, decorated in a vintage style with emerald green and white piped buttercream. This gorgeous cake would be beautiful displayed on the dessert table for the holidays, or even for a Christmas wedding cake.

You might also love this black and white Halloween Lambeth cake, pastel party birthday cake with Lambeth piping, and chocolate cherry pink Lambeth cake.

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Why You’ll Love This Cake

Easy to Decorate. It might not look it, but this is actually a really easy to cake to decorate if you break it down step by step. I have a comprehensive cake decorating tutorial, including step by step photos, to help guide you in decorating your own vintage Christmas cake.

Customizable Christmas Colors. I had originally planned on decorating my green and white Christmas cake with some red and gold candles, or maybe red sugar pearls. But in the end, I felt like the simplicity of the green and white made this the most elegant Christmas cake. Any combination of red, white and green buttercream would be beautiful, though.

Smaller Size. My cake is fairly petite, with just three 6-inch cake layers (from 1/2 a standard cake recipe). You can certainly make this same design with a standard sized 8-inch layer cake. And if you’re looking for Christmas wedding cake ideas, a Christmas Lambeth cake is a beautiful option that looks stunning as a tiered cake.

Tools and Ingredients

• Disposable Piping Bags. You’ll need one 16-inch piping bag and one 12-inch piping bag.
• Coupler and Piping Tips. For today’s design, I used tips 104, 4B, 17 and 69.
• Cake. I used my high altitude vanilla cake recipe, but any cake flavor will work.
• Buttercream. For the buttercream, you want a dependable buttercream recipe that’s stable, fluffy and pipable. My Perfect American Buttercream is a dream to work with when decorating this vintage inspired Christmas cake with Lambeth piping.
• Food Coloring. I talk a bit about how to achieve a deep, emerald green color in your buttercream in this Christmas tree cake tutorial. I typically use a combination of different shades of Americolor gel food coloring in Forest Green, Electric Green, Turquoise, Leaf Green and Super Black, adding a few drops of each until I’m happy with the color. If you’re wary of eating too much food coloring, I recommend filling and frosting the cake with the white vanilla buttercream, then only coloring enough buttercream green for the final, smooth coat of buttercream.

Instructions

• Make 1/2 the recipe for Vanilla Cake as instructed, baking it in three 6-inch round cake pans. Cool the cake completely before frosting.
• Make 5x the recipe for American Vanilla Buttercream.
• Stack, fill and crumb coat the cooled cake with the vanilla buttercream. Use this post for guidance, if needed. Chill the crumb coated cake for 30 minutes.
• Transfer 1 1/4 cups of the vanilla buttercream to a separate bowl, to color it green. Add a few drops each of Forest Green, Electric Green, Turquoise, Leaf Green and Super Black, adding a little more of each as needed to achieve a deep, emerald green color.
• Frost the cake all over with a smooth, final coat of the green buttercream. Chill well, before decorating.
• To decorate your cake with white piping, follow this Lambeth cake decorating tutorial.

Be sure to read all of my BAKING FAQs where I discuss ingredients, substitutions and common questions with cake making, so that you can be successful in your own baking! I also suggest reading these comprehensive posts on making Perfect American Buttercream, How to Stack, Fill, Crumb Coat and Frost Layer Cakes and How to Use Piping Bags.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I freeze the decorated cake?

Yes, you sure can. You can freeze the fully assembled and decorated cake in an airtight container or cake carrier for up to two weeks. Any longer than that, and the buttercream might get dry and crumbly. Thaw the frozen cake for 24 hours in the refrigerator, then bring to room temperature before serving.

What can I do with the leftover buttercream?

If you have leftover green or white buttercream, just freeze it in freezer bags for other baking projects. You can use it for another cake, to frost brownies or blondies, or to decorate sugar cookies.

Where did you get the gold sprinkles?

I have some gold dragees and long gold rod sprinkles that I found on Amazon. Note that these are often labeled “for decoration only”, since they usually contain silver and other inedible ingredients, and are not recommended to be eaten. They are fine to use when decorating your cake, but should be removed with tweezers before serving.

What brand of food coloring do you use?

I use gel food coloring, most often the Americolor brand.

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