Rose Cake - Vanilla with Vanilla Buttercream

I am very excited to write this blog post. Out of all the desserts I've made, this might be the one I'm the most proud of. Not only does this cake taste awesome, but I'm really happy with the way I decorated it - and that's a first!

I recently discovered Bakerita, and she makes me feel lame because she's two years younger than me and her stuff is GORGEOUS and perfect. I have no excuse. But looking at her Fluffy White Cake, I was inspired and decided to try it for myself.

I only used her recipe for the cake. For the icing, I used this recipe.

The cake recipe called for cake flour, but I only had flour. Luckily, I had cornstarch. So instead of two and a half cups of cake flour, I used two cups plus four tablespoons of regular flour, and four tablespoons of cornstarch.

I used my horribly tiny sifter that holds only three fourths of a cup, but since this cake was for one of my husband's coworkers, I wanted it to be perfect.

I split the batter into two pans and baked them. One took 25 minutes, the other took 27, so keep a close eye on them.

While they finished cooling, I prepared the icing. I couldn't believe the recipe called for an ENTIRE two-pound bag of powdered sugar. The recipe said that it was VERY sweet (well, duh) but that was good because the coworker who ordered the cake specifically said he wanted sweet icing. I added just a tiny bit of Wilton "Sky Blue" Icing Color to make it more "manly", since it was going to a man and it was going to be covered in roses (lol - he said he didn't mind me practicing on it, as long as it tasted good). Also, after reading some of the comments I noticed a few people complained about the taste as a result of the shortening used, so I followed their suggestions and added just a bit of almond extract.

I used this frosting to make a crumb coat on my first-ever two-layer cake (yay!).

Not finished yet...

Since it was just the crumb coat, it didn't have to be smooth, as long as the cake didn't show through. I put this in the fridge for about ten minutes to make the rest of the frosting easier.

I used this tutorial for my rose decorating, and I couldn't believe how easy it was!

Looks professional, doesn't it?

It looks AMAZING, right? And it was SO EASY. It would have turned out even better if I'd been using a creamier buttercream, but I wanted the roses to hold their shape overnight since it wouldn't be until the next day that the cake would be delivered.

I don't like to sound like I'm bragging but I'm very proud of this cake. I did not get to eat a slice of it but a small piece fell off the edge while I was frosting it and I tasted it and it was very good. The batter tasted great too, and it smelled exactly like a box mix while baking in the oven.

This one is a definite success! I was very happy that my first attempt at both a two-layer cake and this decorating technique turned out so well.