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Flower Basket Cake
Looking for a unique beautiful dessert? This flower basket cake makes a beautiful celebration cake - for showers, birthdays, even Christmas!
Servings: 16 servings
Calories: 750kcal
Equipment
- 2 small piping bags + tips (linked is a set that contains the reusable piping bag, flowers tips, and basket weave tip I used. I also used this leaf tip - Ateco #352)
- large piping bag + star tip (linked is a set that contains the reusable piping bag & closed star tip I used)
Ingredients
Flower Basket Cake Ingredients
- 2 Ā¼ cups all purpose flour (350g)
- 2 Ā¼ cups granulated sugar (450g)
- 1 Ā¼ cup cocoa powder (100g)
- 1 tsp baking soda (5g)
- Ā¾ tsp salt (4g)
- 1 cup unsalted butter room temperature (2 sticks/250g; softened)
- 4 large eggs (at room temperature)
- 1 Ā½ cups buttermilk (350mL; at room temperature)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Brown Sugar Frosting
- 1 cup butter (two sticks, softened)
- 1 Ā½ cups brown sugar
- 4-5 cups powdered sugar
- 1-3 Tablespoons milk
- 1 Tablespoon clear vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon salt if using unsalted butter
For Decorating
- 3-5 large drops Red gel food coloring
- 2-4 large drops Green gel food coloring
Instructions
Cake layers
- Preheat an oven to 350 degrees (F). Prepare three 8-inch cake pans with baker's floured spray, or grease and line pans with parchment rounds.
- Mix together dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt) in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle (or hand mixer or whisk) until well combined.
- Add in bits of softened butter, mixing until no lumps of butter are visible and the mixture looks crumbly.
- Whisk together eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Add to dry ingredients and mix until no dry ingredients are visible. Scrape down the bowl and beat for another 20 seconds.
- Fill the three pans evenly (I find a kitchen scale helpful for this part; each of mine weighed out to about 550g).Ā This ensures your cake layers will bake to the same height.
- Bake for 30-35 min or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow cake layers to cool for 10-15 minutes on a wire cooling rack before removing from pans, and cool completely before frosting. Set in the fridge or freezer to accelerate the cooling process if desired.
Brown Sugar Frosting
- In a large microwave-safe bowl, microwave butter until melted. Stir in brown sugar and microwave in 45-second intervals until sugar looks dissolved and bubbly. Cool to room temperature (or stir over a bowl of ice water if youāre short on time).
- Beat in powdered sugar alternating with milk until frosting reaches desired consistency. Add vanilla and salt if needed and beat until well combined. (This recipe makes a lot of frosting, but you'll need it for decorating!)
Assembly
- Once your cakes are cool, level them (if needed/desired). This can be done with a cake leveler or a large serrated knife and a ruler. Place a smear of frosting on your cake circle (to keep the cake from sliding while you decorate it) and center your first cake layer in the center of the circle. Spread the layer with frosting, and add your next cake layer on top.
- Repeat the process with your remaining cake layers.
- Now you're ready to crumb-coat . If you're unfamiliar with crumb-coating, it's just what it sounds like ā spreading a thin layer of frosting over the entire outside of the cake to keep crumbs out of your final layer. I usually do this with my large offset spatula.
Decorating
- Now for the basket weave! Transfer about Ā¾ cup of remaining frosting to a small bag fitted with the basket weave tip. Hereās my favorite YouTube Basket Weave Piping tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww0xFkfTBOA) Add basket weave to the outside of the cake.
- Add red gel color to about 1 cup of remaining frosting, and green gel color to about 1/2 cup of frosting. Transfer red frosting to a piping bag fitted with flower tips, and green frosting to a piping bag fitted with leaf tip.
- Pipe buttercream flowers - the design(s) are up to you! Hereās a great YouTube tutorial that shows a bunch of ways to pipe buttercream flowers! I like to pipe onto parchment paper. Chill in the freezer after piping until hardened.
- Add a rope border to the top of the cake with a large closed-star tip. (I also piped some brown sugar frosting over the center of the cake top just to fill it in and make arranging the flowers easier).
- Add buttercream flowers to the top of the cake! Once I liked the way they were arranged, I used my leaf tip to add in green leaves - I hadnāt planned to add any to the rope border, but I ended up really liking the way that it looked. Up to you!
- Enjoy! :)
Video
Notes
Please note nutrition information is an estimate and may not be exactly accurate.
Nutrition
Serving: 1slice (1/16th cake) | Calories: 750kcal | Carbohydrates: 112g | Protein: 9g | Fat: 42g
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