2010's Cake

For this cake I decided to make a 5 layer red velvet cake, with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream. Trends of the 2010 decade were mostly simplistic and brought a sense of whimsical elegance. Because of this I chose to use light colours (white and blue) for my buttercream, and blue crystal sprinkles for a bit of embellishment. In addition, red velvet was the most popular flavour of this decade which is why I chose it. For the piping I simply did swirls of blue roses to cover the entire bottom tier, and for the top a white coat of buttercream with the the sprinkles and some buttercream roses on top. For the roses I used a Wilton 21m tip. The recipe I used for this cake was from Natasha's Kitchen, linked here: https://natashaskitchen.com/red-velvet-cake-recipe/. I usually have very good experiences with Natasha's recipes, but this time my cakes didn't turn out as well as I expected. First of all, they were under baked in the centre when I took them out so I had to put them back in for an additional 15 mins. Because of this, the edges were quite over baked so I had to trim off a lot more than I usually would. The cake did have a very nice flavour however, and a good texture once fully baked. For the buttercream I also used a recipe from Natasha's Kitchen linked here: https://natashaskitchen.com/swiss-meringue-buttercream-recipe/. The buttercream turned out fabulous: it had a beautiful texture, colour, and flavour. I have used swiss meringue buttercream a few times in the past and I can honestly say I will never go back to american buttercream. Swiss meringue buttercream has a much less overwhelmingly sweet taste in my opinion, and is so much easier to use for cake decorating.

Overall, I think this cake was a success and represented a cake of the 2010's very well. I do think I have a ways to go still in terms of improving my piping skills. But, as someone once told me with perfect practice comes perfection!

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