Christmas Tree Cake

Hi!!!! First of all, I would like to apologize to all my viewers for not blogging lately, I've just been very busy. Now back to the post, I made a Christmas Tree Cake. Now, this wasn't meant to be a professional cake, it's just a cake that I wanted to make since a) it's the holidays :D and b) I had the idea ever since December 1. Usually I'd give a detailed procedure with many pictures but this time I just wanted to bake a cake with no stopping or interruptions so I tried to take pictures of immediate steps. Plus, the cake was made using mixes from Wilton and Betty Crocker but I will tell you how I made it and the items I used so let's get started!!!

Yes, I was about to make the best Christmas Tree ever compared to other of my cakes. So, I was originally going to use a vanilla, confetti or French vanilla cake mix and add green food colouring but I decided to go with chocolate fudge cake mix of Betty Crocket because logically the wood is brown, I guess? Please feel free to go with any other flavour and to make it green just add green food gel/colouring and mix until its all green. I made the chocolate cake according to the instructions and put it in a buttered rectangular pan. If you don't like buttering the pan then you can just use parchment paper but you need to remember that 1) parchment paper can NOT be in an oven thats 400℃ and up even though the cake is to be baked in 350℃ which is okay and 2) you need to cut the parchment paper so it's flat and does not bend otherwise it messes with the cakes shape. For the oven, make sure that there is nothing on the top left stove because thats where heat comes from the oven. Bake your cake for 30-35 minutes if using a rectangular pan which is good to use for this cake. Then once fully cooled, assemble by cutting a Christmas Tree shape, if you would like you could cut out a star. If cutting the shape is too hard, just cut three triangles and arrange them from smallest to largest. Cut a small rectangle for the trunk if wanted.

Time for the icing. I decided to make buttercream icing, my favourite. The reason I don't like to make buttercream from scratch is because when I make it, I some times run out so I have to make a new batch. One day I was in Superstore and as soon as I entered the baking isle, the first thing that caught my eye was this Wilton buttercream mix. I thought that if I buy this mix I won't have to keep on making buttercream numerous time for one cake and I was right, it helped a lot. It was 6$ but worth it, and let's face it, many Wilton products are expensive haha. You can also purchase this and almost all Wilton products from Micheals. The thing is that one box is for one cake but I'm okay with that. As you can see, in front of the box is an offset spatula also known as an icing spatula. These are heaven when icing a cake, and especially the sides which I didn't do. I found this at Walmart and it was 8$ I think, and again 1) this spatula is awesome and 2) perhaps you can get this from Micheals too. By the way, it's not a Wilton product but maybe you could find one that is.

Before I did the above coat, I did a crumb coat which I unfortunately didn't take a picture of. For those of you who don't know what a crumb coat is, it's basically a layer or coat of icing that goes on the cake before final icing. The crumb coat is not supposed to be perfect as the purpose of doing it is to keep all the crumbs together before you do the final layer. Once you make a crumb coat, you would pop the crumb coated cake in to the fridge for 15 minutes. Remember to not put a warm cake in the fridge which is why we completely cool the cake before icing, we also cool it so it doesn't melt. After you do the crumb coat, you can put the rest of the buttercream. What I did is get the buttercream and add green food gel that's really useful. Add many drops to get a colour darker than the one I have if wanted. I must admit that this icing colour is great to make a grinch cake. After smoothing it out with my spatula I made an outline around the cake with icing.

And it is done! I finished the cake with pearl sprinkles and finished with small sprinkles, which are the tiny sprinkles scattered on the cake. As you see, I added in my trunk. The cake itself was delicious and I can not wait to eat it. I hope you also decide to make a tree like this, or to boost your skills, I challenge you to maybe make a Christmas tree cake, a grinch cake or maybe a Santa cake and share the pictures with me.  Please do comment if you have any questions and don't forget to share!! Merry Christmas to all of you celebrating ☺