Spring Flowers Cake with Kootek's Piping Tips

Directions

Vanilla Cake:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Spray three 6-inch cake pans with non-stick spray.

2. Sift cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.

3. In a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and oil together for 3-4 minutes until they blend.

4. Incorporate sugar into the mixture and beat on medium to high speed until light and fluffy, about 1-2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

5. With the mixer on low speed, add the egg whites. Scrape down the sides and add the vanilla. Beat on high until the mixture is smooth and light in color, about 1 minute.

6. With the mixer also on low speed, alternate the flour mixture with buttermilk, ending with the flour mixture into the bowl, and mix until just combined. Scrape down the bowl. Do this three times (1/3 each time). Do not overmix, or your cake will become dense.

7. Distribute the cake batter evenly between three 6-inch cake pans. I weigh my batter to ensure uniform size.

8. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the knife comes out clean. Set your timer to 3o minutes and check every 5 minutes to ensure it doesn't overbake.

9. Cool the cake pans on a cooling rack for 10 minutes before inverting and removing cakes from the cake pan to cool completely.

Vanilla Buttercream:

1. Pour pasteurized egg whites into a stand mixer bowl with a whisk attachment, weighing them to 110g.

2. Next, sift the powdered sugar and dump it into the bowl, weighing the powdered sugar to 453g.

3. Mix on a low speed to incorporate everything. Scrap down the sides to make sure all of the powdered sugar is combined. Mix again to combine everything.

4. Dump room temperature butter into the mixer and mix on a medium speed.

5. Change the attachment to a paddle attachment, mix on high for 5 minutes, and mix on low for 5 minutes to get rid of air bubbles.

Cake Decorating Instructions:

1. Fill and stack the 6-inch cake layers. Crumb coat the cake, then apply the final coat of buttercream. Refrigerate the cake for an hour.

2. Split the remaining buttercream into four bowls. You will only need a small amount buttercream for black buttercream and white buttercream.

3. Color the buttercream with purple, pink, yellow, and green. You will only need 2-3 drops for purple to create a lavender color. Do the same for the pink and yellow. You will need to use more than three drops for green.

4. Fill the piping bags: (1)K01 and K13 with a coupler and green buttercream. (2)K08 with lavender buttercream. (3)K12 with pink buttercream. (4)K13 with white buttercreame. (5)Piping bag with yellow buttercream (no piping tip). Snip a small tip off. (6)Piping bag with black buttercream (no piping tip). Snip a small tip off.

5. Trace the line with a toothpick on the cake to create a stem.

6. Pipe a stem with the K01 piping tip.

7. Pipe the lavender flowers with K08 piping tip. Space them apart.

8. Trace the line with the toothpick.

9. Pipe the baby breath flowers with K13 piping tip.

10. Start piping small yellow dots in each center of the flower.

11. Trace the line with the toothpick.

12. Start piping pink petals with K12 piping tip with the long tip pointed towards you. For the bottom petals, pipe with the long tip away from you.

13. Pipe the yellow dot in the center of the flower.

14. Repeat the process until you run out of the space for piping flowers.

15. Pick a flower to create a black dotted line for the bees.

16. Place a bee next to the flower.

17. Grab the flower tip. Place a square wax paper on it (pipe a small buttercream on it before you place the wax paper.

18. Start with the long tip pointed down and create a small rosebud using K12 piping tip.

19. Pipe petal flowers using K12.

20. Refrigerate them on a baking sheet for 15 minutes.

21. Pipe some blobs on the top of the cake (left or right)

22. Place all of the cold buttercream flowers on the top of the blobs.

23. Switch the green buttercream piping bag from K01 to K18.

24. Pipe green textures all over the flowers to create “foliage” effect.

25. Enjoy! Make sure to refrigerate the cake before serving.