Christmas Tree Cake

This cake was requested yesterday! So I baked up a delicious Baker's Cakes Signature Chocolate Cake and stuck it in the freezer as soon as it cooled to room temperature. This makes it much easier to carve and frost. I used an 8" layer, two 6" layers, and a 4" layer rounds. I frosted it with yummy buttercream frosting.

I started layering the cakes and doweled them (just in case). We can't have any caketastrophies with less than a few hours to spare!

After carving the layers, I popped it into the fridge to firm up a bit.

Voila! Here's the tricky thing about frosting a cake with buttercream from a pastry bag. The heat from your hands melts the butter in the frosting and can start to become a pile of glop on your cake. I found it useful to refill a smaller pastry bag several times, instead of heating all the buttercream accidentally in a large bag. I have cold hands in general, and that seems to help!

Left over cake bites made the perfect presents. I dipped the bites into some white chocolate dip and waited for them to harden.

When they had hardened I mixed an edible paint made of cake decorators gold dust and vodka. Why vodka? The alcohol evaporates faster than water (I think, at least that's what Duff uses on the Ace of Cakes!)

I placed some red hot candies and piped on some royal icing garland. That star looks a bit crooked! Honestly, I didn't drink any of my paint.

I finished the cake by painting the garland with the gold paint and off the cake went to it's final destination!