Pastel Party Birthday Cake with Lambeth Piping
Vanilla birthday cake in pastel spring colors of pink, orange, white and yellow, decorated with vintage piped buttercream.
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Equipment
- Stand Mixer with Paddle Attachment
- 8-inch cake pans (x4) or, 6-inch cake pans (x4) for an extra tall cake
- 12-Inch Disposable Piping Bags + Couplers
- Piping Tips 4B, 69, 17, 104, 129, and 352
Ingredients
- 1 recipe Vanilla Cake
- 6x recipe Vanilla Buttercream
- gel food coloring (super red or electric pink, orange, yellow, leaf green)
- 1 ½ tbsp confetti sprinkles
- 8 small sugar pearls
Instructions
Bake the Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Prepare four cake pans by spraying the bottoms with non-stick baking spray.Notes on Pan SizesFor the 7-inch tall cake pictured in today's post, divide the cake batter between four 6-inch cake pans. This makes small but thick cake layers for an extra tall cake, and is not recommended for those who are inexperienced with stacking and frosting layer cakes.For a more standard-sized cake that's not as tall but still serves 16 people, divide the cake batter between four 8-inch cake pans. The cake layers will be thinner, and much more manageable for a beginner to stack and frost.For a more petite cake that serves 8 people, cut the cake recipe in half, and use four 6-inch cake pans.
- Prepare the vanilla cake batter as instructed, taking care not to over-mix the batter. Divide the batter evenly between 4 bowls. Use the food coloring to tint three bowls of batter pink, orange and yellow, and stir the confetti sprinkles into the 4th bowl.
- Pour the batter into the prepared baking pans. Bake thicker 6-inch cake layers for about 30-35 minutes, and thinner 8-inch cake layers for about 25-30 minutes. Set the pans on a cooling rack, cover them loosely with a clean kitchen towel, and cool completely before frosting.Be sure to level the cakes by slicing off the domed tops before assembling your cake.
Make the Buttercream and Frost the Cake
- Remove the cooled cakes from the pans, and stack and fill the cake layers with the buttercream. Frost the cake all over with a thin crumb coat of buttercream. Chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, then frost all over with a final smooth coat of buttercream. Chill the frosted cake in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour, before decorating with the Lambeth piping.For tips, see this post: How to Stack, Fill, Crumb Coat and Frost Layer Cakes.
Color the Remaining Buttercream
- Divide the leftover buttercream between several bowls, and use the food coloring to tint each to your desired shade.
- For the design pictured in today's post, you'll need about 1 cup of pink buttercream, 3/4 cup of orange buttercream, 1/2 cup of yellow buttercream, and 2 tablespoons of green buttercream.Pro Tip: To soften the brightness of the pink, orange and yellow, add a tiny drop of "warm brown" gel food coloring to the buttercream. This makes the color a bit more muted and natural
Decorate the Cake
- Use a round cookie cutter or biscuit cutter to mark the top edge of the cake with 8 half circles - this gives you a template to pipe along, so your piping is even all the way around the cake. See photos demonstrating this step in my original Lambeth Cake Post.I'd also suggest reading this post, for tips on how to prep your piping bags and piping tips: How to Use Piping Bags, Couplers and Piping Tips.
- Fit a piping bag with tip 104, and fill with the orange buttercream. Pipe an orange ruffle around the bottom edge of the cake.Still using tip 104, pipe an orange ruffle along the half circles, all around the cake, to make a ruffly garland or draped design. Note that on the first row of ruffles, I didn’t go all the way up to the top edge of the cake, since I wanted to leave room for more rows of piping.
- Next, fit a piping bag with tip 104 and fill with pink buttercream. Pipe a pink ruffle, right on top of the orange ruffle, along the half circles.
- Using tip 4B, pipe a pink shell border above the orange ruffle around the bottom of the cake.
- Fit a piping bag with tip 17, and fill with yellow buttercream. Pipe a yellow shell border above the pink shell border around the bottom of the cake, and above the orange and pink ruffles along the half circles.
- Fit a piping bag with tip 69, and fill with orange buttercream. Pipe a ruffly design along the top edge of the cake.For this ruffle, use the same “push and pull” movement that you do when piping a shell border to pipe the ruffle around the top edge. If you’re unsure how to do this, be sure to practice first on a piece of wax paper, until you like how it looks, before you start piping on your cake.
- With tip 4B, pipe 8 swirls or mounds of pink buttercream at the top edge of the cake.
- With tip 129, pipe 8 small pink flowers around the sides of the cake, then place a small sugar pearl in the center of each flower.
- With tip 352, pipe a few green leaves next to each of the flowers.
- Finish the cake with a birthday candle inserted into each of the swirls on top of the cake.
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