Winter White Birthday Cake

Remember the friends I baked those brownies with? It was their father's birthday recently so I baked a cake for home when they came over this weekend. Since he's a grown man I thought that the cute little elephants or teddy bears I usually associate with boys birthday cakes weren't right. But then again the pink icing and sugar paste roses of a more adult cake seemed a bit girlie.

So I decided to make a devil's food cake with plain un-dyed (but winter white sounds better) vanilla buttercream decorations. One of the girls suggested I do something to the sides of the cake and I happen to have a brand new cake comb, so we picked the medium groove and combed the cake. Cake combs are a really useful tool, by the way. I'd seen a lovely border done with a leaf tip in a cookbook so I figured I'd give that a shot--it worked very well! Then I just made a ring of the leaves on the top and filled it with delicious white chocolate crunchy candies (from callebaut). I think the cake looked elegant enough to serve as a wedding cake for a small wedding--it was an 8" 3-layer cake, so it would have had to be small one.

I love how the edge looks almost fluffy.

By the way, the devil's food cake recipe was from one of the Baked cookbooks (sorry I can't remember which). It's a bit different than other devil's food cake recipes I've made before. It was a little bit lighter than regular devil's food cake, which was really very nice since I was filling and covering the cake with buttercream, which is not known for it's lightness. Overall, it was a delicious and beautiful cake, if I do say so myself!

Look at the inside of that cake! Yum.