Purple Ombre Birthday Cake!

It was my Mum's birthday and I had seen an image on Pinterest of an Ombre cake and my mum saw and image and really liked it so I took it upon myself to make one with purple because that is her favourite colour. I found it was quite a sweet cake, I would advise you to do less sugar if you are not someone who likes sweet things like me. This worked out really well for me and as the sponge mostly came out of the oven looking normal I didn't know if it had worked until we cut into it.

Ingredients:
Cake:
Either 18cm tins or 20 cm (if 18 5 layers if 20 4 layers)
355g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
225ml milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
400g caster sugar ( I would suggest same amount as flour 355g)
225g unsalted butter or salted
4 medium eggs
food colouring
Icing:
500g icing sugar
250g salted butter

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180'c. Grease cake tins with baking parchment and butter. Weigh a empty large bowl which you will use for the main  mixture (sugar and butter are first things to go in it) and make a note of the weight.
2. In a medium sized bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt with a wooden spoon.
3. In a measuring jug mix the milk and vanilla extract together with either or fork or spoon.
4. Using an electric mixer on a low speed mix the butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Once blended increase speed and beat until pale and creamy.
5. Reduce speed to medium and low and beat in the eggs one at a time making sure to beat well between.
6. (this is quite complicated to explain) You want to add 1/4 of the flour mix and mix it into the sugar an butter then add 1/3 of the milk and vanilla mix and mix well. repeat this step until all of both mixtures have been used and mixed well.
7. Measure the bowl of mixture and subtract the weight of the bowl empty from the weight of the bowl with the mixture in. Then divide the number left by either 5 or 4 depending on the size of the cake tin. I got 353g per bowl. So you need to put "353g" of mixture into 4 or 5 bowls.
8. you then want to add as much food colouring to each bowl as you think needed to make an even ombre of purple. Once happy with the colour pour the mixture into your cake tins, I only had the one cake tin so I had to put in the cake mixture one at a time. You then one to bake them I the oven for 15- 20 minutes and leave them to cool in the tins for 5 minutes before removing them to put on a cool rack.

1. You want to leave the cake's to cool until all of them are stone cold and ready to ice. You need to  get out the butter and set it aside roughly half an  hour before you start to make the icing and chop it into small cubes.
2. In a large mixing bowl beat the butter on a high  speed until smooth and fluffy.
3. Reduce the speed to medium low and gradually add in the icing sugar. Once all combined increase the speed to high and beat until pale and fluffy. If needed add a bit of salt.
4. Once the cakes are stone cold trim the tops so they are even and make sure they are even around the edges. Then decide which order you want your cakes to go in I went from light - dark. Then place some icing smoothly and roughly even on top of all the layers except the top one and then layer up your cake.
5. Then crumb coat your cake (do a smooth thin layer of icing all over the sides and top) then refrigerate for 15 minutes.
6. Then using the left over icing I added food colouring to and then piped it on the top and "smeared" it round the sides. And then shook hundreds and thousands all over it. a top tip for hundreds and thousands would be too do it when it is on a plate so the hundreds and thousands go on the plate not on the floor which is very difficult to clean up.

So I hope you attempt this cake and you can even add some variety to change it up. Maybe add some sprinkles in the centre.
byee x



113 days till Christmas Eve!!!