Neapolitan Watercolour Cake!
The cake is best made the day before and then iced on the day that you serve it
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes
Decorating time: 25 minutes
- 300g/10.6 ozs. butter, softened
- 2.5 cups caster or superfine sugar
- 5 eggs, at room temperature
- 3.5 cups cake flour* sifted twice
- 5 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 cup buttermilk**
- 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons cocoa powder, sifted
- Pink colouring gel
- Strawberry flavouring
For buttercream
- 350g/12.36ozs. butter, at room temperature
- 8-9 cups icing sugar, sifted
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
- Pink colouring gel
- Strawberry flavouring
- You will also need two angled spatulas and a cake scraper
To decorate
- Macarons
- Organic flowers (roses are best as they are not toxic)
- Sticky tape
*To make 1 cup of cake flour, place 2 tablespoons fine cornflour/cornstarch in a measuring jug and fill to the 1 cup measure with plain flour.
**To make buttermilk you can add a dash of lemon juice or white vinegar to milk (enough to make it curdle)
Step 1 - First measure the weight of your mixer bowl (so that we can divide the batter into three). Preheat oven to 170C/340F and line the base and sides of 3x 30cm/8inch cake tins. Fit your mixer with a beater attachment and beat the butter, sugar and then the eggs until fluffy and mixed well. Add the flour and baking powder in two lots mixing in on the absolute lowest speed alternating with the buttermilk and vanilla.
Step 2 - Weigh your bowl now and subtract the weight of the mixer bowl. Divide by three (mine was about 650g/23ozs. for each colour) and place the plain vanilla in one of the prepared tins and then divide the rest in two using scales. Add a touch of pink rose colour and flavouring to one being careful not to overmix it (you don't want to activate the gluten as this will make the cake tough). Add the cocoa powder into the third and place each in the prepared tins. Bake each cake for 35-40 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Cool completely and wrap well in cling film.
Step 3 - Make the buttercream. Using the beater attachment, beat the butter and then add the icing sugar, milk and vanilla on very low speed. Increase speed to high and beat for a minute or two until fluffy and thick. Place 2/3 of this vanilla buttercream in two piping bags (it won't fit into one piping bag) with a large plain tip or just snip the ends. Divide the remaining quarter into two with most of the buttercream tinted pink and just 4 tablespoons tinted brown with the cocoa. Tint one of them pink with strawberry flavouring and the other with the cocoa powder. Place these in small piping bags.
Step 4 - Unwrap the cake layers and place the chocolate layer on a cake carousel. Pipe the vanilla buttercream on top and then spread it out to reach the sides as much as possible. I should have levelled the cake but I didn't want to lose height. Repeat with the vanilla and then then place the strawberry layer on top. Pipe some pink buttercream on top and spread it out to the edges (making sure to reserve some for the sides).
Step 5 - Now comes the watercolour effect. Spread the vanilla buttercream on the sides making sure that it isn't too thick. You want to see some of the cake layers (or you can actually make this thick, it was just that Elly likes naked cakes and I wanted to show some of the layers). Pipe stripes of pink and chocolate and then using the spatula spread it across. This will look a bit like a mess but you want streaks of colour.
Step 6 - Then take the cake scraper on the longest side and place it against the buttercream and turn the carousel. This smooths out the colour and icing and creates the watercolor buttercream effect.
Step 7 - Snip the rosebuds and take the sticky tape and tape up the ends. Do this twice just in case especially if you are not using roses. You can also use a flower pick although these tend to be quite large, find small ones if you can. Place the blossoms alternating with the macarons. This cake can keep at room temperature unless it is a very hot day.