Pink Ombre Cake Tutorial + Gratuitous cake photos

So I was asked to make a cake for my niece's 4th birthday, a banana cake was asked for. But of course me, being me, I could not leave it at that. I set myself a goal so high I almost didn't pass, but I think I scraped on through. I wanted to make this: (a slightly lofty goal for a non-baker.)

This cake is a labour of love. Don't expect to finish it in an hour or so. It takes a few hours. It's not so much hard as it is time consuming. P.S you will need a LOT (like 1.5kg) of icing sugar for this, and a lot of cream cheese (2 tubs - you could do a plain butter icing though).

I didn't use the recipe recommended by them, I found an easier one.

Double/Triple this for this cake;

1 and a half cups of Self Raising Flour
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup of milk
2 eggs
125g (4 oz) butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract.

Mix all the ingredients together, then divide into four bowls

Now the fun starts!

Add the pink gel food coloring, starting with the palest layer, and add only a touch. Add a bit more to each one until you have four different pink shades

If you are lucky, you have more than one baking pan the same size. If not, like me, you will have to cook each one individually for about 15 mins each at 180 degrees. Allow time for the cake to cool, then move to a cooling rack, before cleaning the pan and doing the next layer

Once all four layers are cooked and cooled, you need to assemble them, from darkest to lightest. You need to make all the cakes flat, so cut the tops off them with a bread knife (except the topmost one.) To stick them together use a batch of this cream cheese icing (or you could use plain butter icing);

Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting
½ cup (1 stick/8 Tablespoons) butter (set at room temp about 10 minutes, but should still be cool)
8 oz. cream cheese (directly from fridge)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (always use pure vanilla extract if possible)
4 cups powdered confectioners sugar
1 to 4 Tablespoons heavy cream, heavy whipping cream (or milk- although I do like the richness that cream adds)

Directions:
*Place butter in a large mixing bowl and blend slightly. Add cream cheese and blend until combined, about 30 seconds.
*Add vanilla extract and powdered sugar and blend on low speed until combined. Increase to medium speed and beat until it begins to get fluffy.
*Slowly add the heavy cream, a little bit at a time until desired consistency is met. (Don't add too much if you want the frosting to stay in place when piped on cupcakes.)
*Beat until fluffy, about 1 minute.

(I did all of this by hand, don't worry about a mixer)

Then assemble!

One you have done this you will need to cover the cake in a 'crumb layer' - a thin layer of the same icing:

Then make another batch and a half of icing. As with the cake mixture, add colours to get four graduated colours of icing

Note: This was nowhere near enough icing

Then ice your cake! Start at the bottom and do a twirl with a 5 star tip. See here for how to. You can see my first layer on the above photo. Do three layers on the side and the lightest colour on the top. When you are finished it will look like this (or better than this, if you are a pro-icer.)

I was amazed! So happy!

But I did something bad. I did not put it in the fridge (as apparently it can dry the cake out- although this cake is so covered in icing, I don't know why I thought it would effect this cake.)

Anyway, I put it in the bathroom for the night as this was the coolest room in the house. Unfortunately disaster/heat/gravity ensued and by the time we can back that night half of the side icing had come off!! Horror! I did not have the spirit to re-ice in graduated colours, so I just mixed all the fallen icing back up, and iced it to a mid pink colour.

The final cake

Oh well. I don't think Sadie minded, or even noticed :)

Cake innards

All in all, a lovely cake!