We’d like to send a big thank you to Zozefa Pegou, a sugar artist, for her wonderful creation!
For the cake
- Preheat oven to 180*C (350* F) Fan.
- In a mixer, beat the butter and sugar, using the paddle attachment, until they the mixture becomes fluffy, turns white and doubles in size.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, waiting for each addition to become completely incorporated before adding the next.
- Then, add the vanilla extract and the flour.
- Beat just to incorporate all of the ingredients.
- Grease three 15 cm cake pans with butter and dust with flour. If you like, you can also line the bottom of the cake pans with parchment paper.
- Divide mixture evenly between them.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes or you insert a toothpick in to the center of each and it comes out clean and dry.
- When ready, remove from oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes on a wire rack. Turn them out of cake pans and set them back on the wire rack until completely cool.
For the buttercream frosting
- In a mixer, beat the butter with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy.
- Add the sifted icing sugar in 2 batches. Add the milk between the first and second batch of icing sugar.
- Continue beating until the mixture becomes fluffy and increases a great deal in volume. You will know it is ready when the sugar has almost disappeared in the cream.
- Divide the buttercream in ½. Half will be used for the filling and for frosting the cake. The other half can be divided in to as many parts as you like, according to how many colors you want to use to decorate the cake.
- Fill a separate pastry bag with each color to decorate.
To assemble
- Place one of the three cake layers on a clean working surface.
- Spread ¼ of the buttercream frosting over it with a spatula.
- Cover with the second layer of cake and spread another ¼ of the buttercream.
- Cover again with the third layer of cake.
- Spread the remaining buttercream all over the top and sides of the layers of cake. Even it out and make it nice and smooth with a large spatula or knife. It helps if you have the cake on a cake stand.
- When ready, refrigerate to chill so that the buttercream frosting can become more firm.
- When it has chilled, decorate with the colorful buttercream from pastry bags.
- For this particular cake we decorated it by piping out half circles of buttercream, which we shaped in to drops with a spatula.