2000's Cake

For my 2000's cake I wanted to create a "grocery store cake" but a classy, good quality, and delicious version! The type of cake decorating we know today (and have seen in past decades), didn't really have a place in the early 2000's, so it was quite a challenge to find inspiration for this cake. Most birthday cakes and cakes for similar occasions were simply either made at home, or bought from Dairy Queen, or a grocery store-hence the grocery store cake idea.

The 2000's cakes were all about simplicity. Wedding cake trends especially saw a huge decline in extravagant large structured cakes. During this decade people opted for smaller cakes often surrounding by large rings of cupcakes. This decade also introduced many more character cakes themed after popular movies, tv shows, and toys. The most popular cake flavours of this decade included some common favourites such as chocolate, vanilla, funfetti. The 2000's played it safe in terms of cakes, but I guarantee things are about to get much more exciting with the coming of my 1990's and 1980's cakes!

The cake I made for this decade was vanilla flavoured and combined the technique of your generic american vanilla cake with a Japanese sponge cake. The recipe I used for the cake is from the website which is linked here: https://www.recipetineats.com/my-very-best-vanilla-cake/. I have to say that I absolutely loved the texture of this cake; all three layers baked very evenly and had a nice springy bounce. As always I used my go to Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe from the website linked here: https://natashaskitchen.com/swiss-meringue-buttercream-recipe/. The one and only aspect of this buttercream which I dislike is the fact that I am always left over with 7 egg yolks. Because of this I've been trying to find some more recipes that only use the yolks; some of my favourites are plain custard, Natas (Portuguese pastries), and chewy chocolate chip cookies. For the details of this cake I kept it simple and classic with some piped shells on the bottom and the rosettes on top. Then I added some pink sprinkles on top and pink pearls to line the bottom. Overall, I would say this cake was a huge success. I enjoyed baking and decorating this cake so much and I can't wait for my next one!

I would also like to mention here that I have decided to donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale of each cake to plant trees in Palestine, as this is a cause that I very much believe in and want to support. In addition I think this will add more of a global context to my project.