High Altitude Candy Cane Christmas Cake
A high altitude recipe for candy cane cake, with six layers of vanilla bean cake, frosted with red and white striped peppermint buttercream.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Six 6-inch cake pans
- Stand Mixer with Paddle Attachment
- 2 16-inch Piping Bags + Couplers
- 2 Piping Tips #12
- Cake Decorating Turntable
- Bench Scraper
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 ⅓ cups cake flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 2 large eggs
- 1 large egg white (save the extra yolk for another use)
- 1 cup buttermilk
- ⅓ cup unsalted butter, melted
- ⅓ cup vegetable oil
- 1 ½ tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
- super red gel food coloring
- bright white food coloring (optional)
Buttercream
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 cup vegetable shortening
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp meringue powder (optional)
- ¼ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- ¾ tsp peppermint (not mint) extract
Decorating
- super red gel food coloring
- 1 tbsp granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp coarse white sparkling sugar
- assorted candy canes, peppermint sticks, peppermint candy and lollipops
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Spray the bottoms of six 6-inch cake pans with non-stick baking spray.
- In a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Whisk to combine well.
- In another large bowl, whisk together the eggs, egg white, buttermilk, melted butter, oil and vanilla extract until smooth.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and whisk until mostly combined and smooth, about 10-15 seconds. Don't over-mix, since you'll be mixing the batter again when you add the food coloring.
- Divide the batter evenly between two bowls. Add the red food coloring to one bowl of batter, and the white food coloring to the other bowl. Stir the coloring into the batter until combined.
- Divide the red cake batter between 3 cake pans, then divide the white cake batter between 3 cake pans.
- Bake on the center oven rack for about 13-15 minutes, until the centers spring back when lightly touched. Since there's a small amount of batter in each pan, the layers will be fairly thin.
- Cool the cakes in the pans before assembling and frosting.Note: This cake also looks really nice with ALL of the cake batter colored red, so you'll have 6 red layers of cake alternating with white buttercream.
Buttercream
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and shortening for 1 minute until smooth. With the mixer on low, add the powdered sugar by spoonfuls, the meringue powder, and the salt, mixing until combined but clumpy. Add the vanilla and peppermint extracts. Increase speed to medium and whip for 4-5 minutes, until very light and fluffy, stopping to scrape the bowl down several times. Turn the speed down to "stir" and mix for 1 more minute.
- Stack and fill the cooled cake layers with the buttercream, alternating the red and white cake layers as you assemble them. Frost the cake all over with a thin crumb coat of buttercream, and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before you finish frosting and decorating the cake.
Decorating
- While the crumb coated cake is chilling, divide the remaining buttercream evenly between two bowls. Use super red gel food coloring to tint one bowl of buttercream red.Even with a lot of food coloring, the red buttercream may have a coral or pink tint to it, but it will darken over the course of a few hours to a deeper red color.If your white buttercream looks too ivory, you can stir in a few drops of bright white food coloring to whiten and brighten it.
- Fit two piping bags with couplers and tips #12 (medium sized round tip). Fill one bag with white buttercream and one bag with red buttercream.
- Place your chilled, crumb coated cake on a cake decorating turntable.
- Starting with the white buttercream, pipe a row of buttercream around the base of the cake. Then pipe a row of red buttercream right above the white. Continue to pipe rows of buttercream, alternating red and white as you work your way up the sides of the cake, ending on top. Be sure to pipe the rows close together, trying to keep them as straight and even as possible, and without any gaps in between.
- Take your bench scraper and slowly spin the turntable as you sweep the bench scraper around the sides of the cake. The goal here is not to remove too much frosting, but to smooth out the lines and blend the stripes together. The more evenly you piped your rows of buttercream, the more even and straight the stripes will look.Scrape the excess frosting off the bench scraper into a bowl, and wipe the bench scraper clean before you go around the cake again. Repeat several times, until the sides and top of the cake is smooth.
- In a small bowl, combine the granulated sugar and coarse white sparkling sugar. Toss the sugar all over the top and sides of the cake, before the frosting crusts over.
- Decorate your cake with candy canes in assorted sizes, peppermint candy, peppermint sticks and lollipops.
- If you have any leftover red and white buttercream, you can use it to pipe swirls on top of the cake.
Notes
Store the leftover cake in an airtight container or cake carrier at room temperature for up to 3 days.
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