Birthday Cake for Grandma

I’ve been trying to get better at my buttercream and ganache game so with a family birthday this week I offered to make a cake.

I’ve included some of the progress photos and I’ll try to outline some of the lessons I learnt along the way for next time.

The cake itself was just plain chocolate, really simple but moist and stable. They came out with small domes so I cooked them upside down with a book weighing them down as well. Once cooled I trimmed the tops to make them neater and flat.

I used buttercream to join the two tiers, chilled it in the fridge for a bit, then applied a crumb coat. The crumb coat could’ve been better, with some cake still visible. Back into the fridge to set.

The next bit was the hardest. I laboured trying to get smooth straight sides for the final coat of buttercream. I don’t even know how much time passed applying, smoothing, reapplying. And in the end I started to see crumbs appear so I got it good enough and called it a day. I plan to get a new, longer scraper to make this easier.

After an extended chill in the fridge, I trimmed the top to make it really nice and flat and applied a dark chocolate ganache. I learnt here that I need to be more brave with the drips because I ended up having tiny, sparse drips and had to go over it again, leading to that sort of layered, thick look I don’t much like.

Lastly I had planned to use Russian piping tips to make flowers but they didn’t work with my buttercream, perhaps it was too smooth and soft. I ended up using leaf tips to make “flowers” that looked quite cute.

Cake tasted pretty good! The buttercream filling was probably too much sweetness though, I’ll use a ganache, cream or mousse next time.

All that matters is the birthday girl liked it.