Pink & White Celebration Cake

Double-Layer Vanilla Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

Vanilla Cupcakes with a tinted Swirl of Vanilla Buttercream

I’ve said it before, Vanilla is the new sexy!  And this Classic Vanilla Layer Cake sure is a dream.  Inspired by the vintage images I love, I baked this cake to match a Crisco ad highlighting the quality of cakes, pies, and fried food.  I kinda love that.  Since the ad features a sliced cake, I captured a few snapshots beforehand.

This is how I put it together….

In order to enhance the white and brighten the pink, I added six egg whites in place of four whole eggs.

It’s critical to not overwork the batter when adding color.  And that’s a hard thing for me to dial in juuuust right.  If I don’t mix the gel thoroughly, there are white pockets – over work it, and the cake is tough instead of light and bouncy.

The white layer baked very well.

I chose to bake a 9″ cake in order to have more real estate to work with regarding the design and slices.  It was a good decision based on the distance from the edge of the cake to the edge of the plate.

I don’t have a dark blue cake plate, so I went with the retired Periwinkle Fiesta Dinnerware Round Server I do have.  It looks great to me.

Covering the larger cake round with a decent amount of buttercream requires a fourth scoop; no big deal.

It’s a teeny tiny detail, but I removed the baked top edge of the cake to eliminate the very thin brown line between the buttercream and the sponge (if you look closely at the slices, you can just see a bit of brown).

Time to frost the entire cake and give the top a bit of a rough swirl.

Based on the design in the ad, I marked where to place a loop with the pink buttercream.

Usually at this point in the process, giving up seems like a good option.  I didn’t like the sides of the cake and smoothed them out for the photos.

There was just enough pink batter left over for a pair of cupcakes… I really enjoy the combination swirl of pink and white.

I simply adore these upended Fiesta Demitasse Cups and Saucers… looks like a cupcake stand to me.

I have several very lovely cake lifters; I use them all the time.  But, I didn’t have one with a silver handle – which shows up frequently in the vintage cake ads.  On holiday last month (celebrating 29 years of married life, continuously… to each other), my life partner bought me this cake server at the Titanic Museum in Belfast.  I’m in love with them (the knife and the museum… and my dude!).

Time to set up the shoot and get the angles just right.

This was the final result… and I added a recipe card.

I loved the inside of this cake.. it looks like a party just sitting there on the plate!  Seriously, I couldn’t get enough of this cake and took all kinds of photos.

The matching Periwinkle dessert plate completes the look of this set.  I couldn’t be happier with the results.

I love that my life partner loves me and supports my baking.

I love that our people stay in contact on an ongoing regular basis.

I love how sobriety has manifested in my life.

Postscript:  After I studied the photo more closely, I believe it’s a three layer cake with chocolate at the base.  It’s unclear in the artist’s rendering (“Hello dark shadows”) but it would explain the line of white buttercream under the pink.  Looks like I might have a redo in my future.