Strawberry Swirl Cake

June 05, 2012

Strawberry Swirl Cake

This past weekend we celebrated mama’s birthday! We played golf, went to Viande Rouge (an amazing French steak house) and went to see Kenny Chesney and Tim Mcgraw Brothers of the Son Concert – all of which were AMAZING. But really what’s a birthday without a birthday cake?!

My mom’s absolute favorite cupcake is a strawberry cupcake with Strawberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream – and since she’s the birthday girl she get’s to call the shots.

Now, I have to forewarn you, and maybe even remind you over the next few posts that in NO WAY am I a food-tagpraher. In fact, I don’t even have a camera since it broke spontaneously down in New Zealand. In my opinion, I’d rather bake a better tasting cake than have a great picture of a so-so one, and I have to tell you that this cake was gorgeous in person and even more delicious than it looked.

Now that that's cleared up, once I baked and cooled my strawberry cakes. I set off to make the strawberry swiss meringue buttercream. Strawberry swiss meringue buttercream is in a tug-of-war for my favorite icing of all time. It’s soft and silky and almost has the texture of a whipped mouse, but isn’t too light that it disappears when you take a bite. Sorry for rambling, but did I mention I love icing?

So I baked two 9” cakes that I then stacked with a layer of icing in between that I just scooped with my spatula and spread smooth, making sure to use the icing to help level my cake.

Now time to ice the cake! Everybody has a method for icing the base layer of the cake, but the EASIEST and FASTEST and BEST way to ice your cake is to pipe it! You heard me, pipe the base layer! I use Wilton tip #789, which is the jumbo cake icer.

Just fill the bag and pipe concentric circles until you’ve covered the top of the cake.

From there you just have to take your spatula maybe once around to get a perfectly smooth and even top. After, pipe the width of the side of the cake. Hold your spatula vertically against the side and rotate the cake to smooth out the sides.

And voila! You’ve now achieved a perfectly iced cake – time to decorate!

Mama couldn't resist staying out of the kitchen, even for her own cake

I went with a shabby chic design and did large swirls all around the cake. This took of all of about a few minutes and I was left very satisfied with the way it turned out!

To achieve the same look, just throw on a healthy amount of icing of top of the cake, using your spatula, spread out the icing using large swirl movements. This is not a cake to exert your perfectionism! The appeal comes from the ease and effortless swirls.

Once you’ve achieved the look you want on the top, mimic the same on the sides, using another healthy dose of icing. A good movement to use for the sides is an up-and-down (sinusoidal, bouncing slinky, however you picture it) swirl.