A Night at the Masquerade

I just wanted to start off by wishing one of my best friends, Tara, a wonderful 25th birthday today! We celebrated the day of her birth a night early last night and went out on the town all dressed up donning our masks. We fit in well due to the fact that there were scads of prom groups out as well. To help Tara celebrate her masquerade birthday I made her a cake to match. I really hoping she enjoyed it! It fit her theme and tasted yummy to boot.

Tara enjoying her cake in her lovely mask!

For this cake I used my favorite yellow cake recipe. It is great for a cake that needs to feed a lot of people. The recipe is originally for 2 9x13" pans, however I split it between 6 9" cake pans so my baking time is dramatically lowered than one the recipe calls for. 

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 2 1/2 cups white sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two 9x13 inch pans. Sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk, mixing just until incorporated. Pour batter into prepared pans.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool.

This is my go to recipe for a delicious cake. It is very dense but still very moist because it has so much buttermilk. So for this specific cake I split it evenly into three bowls so that I could individually color the layers. 

I then used colors that I thought would work well with the masquerade theme...

The batter ended up looking a little bit like this...

I baked 6 different layers. Two of each color. Since each pan only had about a cup and a half of batter in it, it only took about 15 minutes to bake each layer. 

After all of the layers cooled I stacked the cake with yellow frosting in the middle.

I then frosted the entire cake in a purple frosting. I used a bowl scraper to make the sides even with frosting. I let the cake then set in the fridge before I decorated the rest of the cake. 

For decorations I the cake I made roses out of butter cream in red and black. I also made gems and stars out of white chocolate with molds and sprayed them with an edible pearl dust so they looked more realistic. After I had all of these things ready to go it was just a matter of getting it all on the cake!

I think it turned out well. It would double well as a Phantom of the Opera cake with a different mask on top! I like how it turned out. The inside was also a colorful surprise!

All in all, happy birthday to Tara! I hope you had a great birthday. I had a great time and I thought we all looked amazing in our masks, including the cake.