Mother's Day (easy) Cake

Beautiful and easy. This cake is so simple to make. REALLY! See the step-by-step tutorial below.

1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Pre-heating is very important for cakes.

2. Cut a piece of waxed paper, or baking paper to fit your pan. Butter the pan, lay the paper in, and then butter and flour the paper. (The cake in the photo is an angel food cake and  did not need this step, but you can see some photos on how to do this HERE. Steps #2 & 3)  

3. Make your favorite cake recipe and there is no shame in using mixes if you do not yet have a great recipe.

4.  Fill the pan 3/4 full.

5. Bake.
6. Use a large knife to cut off the rounded cake top. (Angel food cakes bake flat so I skipped this step but you can see a photo of it HERE  under steps #6 & 7)
7. Let cake cool before frosting it.
8. Frosting: 1c. butter or cream cheese, 4c. powdered sugar, dash of vanilla, and milk added by the tablespoon till it is a good spreadable consistency will make a good buttercream frosting. For this cake you can use pre-made frosting from the store if wanted, as we do not need it to "set up" like butter cream does. 

9. Put a little frosting on your cake plate to fix the cake to the plate. A food safe charger or plate with a decorative edge makes a nice cake plate.

10. For the first frosting layer do not worry about crumbs. Spread the frosting somewhat thinly and make sure crumbs on your spatula do not end up in the frosting bowl. It is ok if it looks as bad as mine below because we will be covering it up with the next layer of frosting.

11. Color your remaining frosting. This is the one trick of the trade, so to speak, that you should know: Most regular liquid food colorings dilute the frosting, making it too thin to decorate with. Even adding more powdered sugar doesn't seem to fix it. Gel food colors such as the ones shown below work much better. In my area they are sold in Walmarts, and craft stores such as Jo-Anne fabrics and Michael's. You can usually find them anywhere wedding cake supplies are sold.

12. Put colored frosting in a sandwich baggy and make a very, very! small cut on the corner. For this recipe it is best to use a heavier weight freezer bag, but if you are a rebel (like me) and insist on using a sandwich bag be careful because the bag might split. You can fix a split bag easily by cutting the corner a bit bigger and  placing the whole bag into another one and making a very small cut on the corner of that bag.

13. Test that your cut is small enough to make a thin line.

14. Then make loops and squiggles all over the cake, tipping the cake and plate a bit to get the sides too. (I am a bit out of practice on this technique, so if you are a professional looking at this photo, don't look too closely!)

15. Add ribbons and garnish however you like. I used a bit of flowering rosemary to match my Mothers Day Tablescape.  You could also use any edible flower that has been grown organically or even fake flowers. If you are worried that your decorations might taint the cake with something that is not edible you can lay down waxed paper, parchment paper or a doily between the decoration and the cake.