How to Make a Christmas Tree Cake

Today we're making a very Christmassy treat. This cake is filled with the most moist and fluffy, soft and luscious vanilla cake you've ever had in your life. I guarantee it. And on the outside, lots of buttercream Christmas trees. They're so easy to make, your mind will be blown. Let's get started. Into a large bowl, over a scale, but under a sifter, I'm adding one and two thirds cups, or like 213 grams of all purpose flour. There we go. That was so easy, apart from the spray of flour. All right, a quarter teaspoon or so of salt. It's pretty much up to you. I like to have a little bit of contrast to all the sweetness of that cake. One and a quarter teaspoon of baking powder. And right now I'm adding in one cup of sugar, which is technically a wet ingredient, but it's going with the dry anyways. In you go, one cup. Sift it out, a lot of little lumps in there, but you're not gonna go in my cake. Let's give it a whisk and then set aside. For the wet mixture, I'm starting off with half a cup of sour cream. And if you don't have sour cream where you're at, or if you just hate it, you can use plain yogurt. And if you really don't like yogurt either, go ahead and use buttermilk. That's all my substitutions there, I'm not giving you any more. Half a cup of milk, whole milk please. Three quarters of a cup or 176 grams of melted butter. I used to use room temperature butter and you'd have little globs of butter in the mixture, which is totally okay, not a problem, but it freaked people out. So I've switched to melted butter, looks nice and homogenous when you mix it up and it's pretty easy. Next up we have three egg whites. And if you're wondering what about the yolks, well, the yolks will make the cake yellow. I just want the cake to be white. You could totally use yolks if you wanted to, just use maybe like half the amount of sour cream and that should even everything out. These yolks will be used for a delicious pastry cream I'm making later. And if you wanna make your own pastry cream, which is basically sent from heaven above, click up here for my how to make pastry cream video. So delicious, you won't regret it. Right, egg whites in you go. Now you don't wanna get any shells in here, but if you got a broken yolk, totally not the end of the world, not a big deal. Unlike making a meringue where you start to lose your mind over any bit of yolk in there because it would prevent the egg whites from fluffing up. Setting these aside, you could also make a delicious lemon curd or raspberry curd, so many options with egg yolks. Lastly, I have one tablespoon of vanilla extract. And let me tell you, if you wanted to make this more of a holiday cake, you could add peppermint extract, maybe like a quarter teaspoon, half a teaspoon. It's pretty powerful, so don't go overboard, but it can be a nice festive touch. Give this a whisk. I can smell all that vanilla and the butter and it is delicious. All right, that's fine, it can be a bit lumpy. It'll all get worked out once you add in the dry mixture, which is next. Before I mix my batter up though, I will be prepping my pans. You can either butter and flour them, which is what I normally do, but I'm a little tired today. So I'm using some baking spray. Smells like supermarket sheet cake. And that's the only time I would wanna be anywhere near one of those, but they smell kind of intoxicating. Like one of the sprays on popcorn. Baking spray, in case you don't know, is just basically oil with some flour mixed in and it helps the cake release really easily. You can also buy cake release, like gel or liquid, but that stuff bothers me, I don't like it. Can finished, bye can. Pans are prepped, dry is prepped, wet's prepped. Now we're going to just pour the wet into the dry and whisk it up. You could use a paddle attachment in your standing mixer. You could also do this with little hand beaters, but I'm kind of like trying to do less dishes today. This batter makes exactly enough for three six inch pans. I like six inch pans because, you know, I make a lot of cakes, like built in portion control, and I love the proportions of the way they look with three stacked up. But if you wanted to make an eight inch cake, I would double the batter. A nine inch cake, triple the batter. It's a huge amount of cake. That's what I do when I have like a birthday party request from a friend, I'll make a nine inch triple layer cake, and I'm just like shocked by how many ingredients go in there. Okay, you can see how smooth this batter becomes right away. Nice and silky. That was just like 30 seconds of mixing by hand, and I got a little bit of exercise. Okay, back to my scale. I want to have exactly even cake layers. This is optional, but I'm a Virgo, so this is how my life is. Cake scale, we're going to measure out exactly the same amount of batter in each pan. And if you're wondering, these are fat daddy-o's pans. I like those six inch pans. In case you're wondering, so start off by eyeballing it. Ooh, and by eyeballing it, I mean, read the scale as you carefully pour it. This recipe makes delicious cupcakes too, by the way. They turn out really moist. You know, like some cupcakes, they're so fluffy, they just kind of collapse. They can't hold a lot of frosting on top, and you feel like you got cheated basically because there's like just air inside. These are not dense, but they're more substantial, which is what I like. I am satisfied. Basically an equal amount of batter in each pan. Now I'm putting on these ratty old cake strips, which are like, you know, I've had them for years, and I love them. They give you nice, flat cake layers. You have to wet them first, and I actually soak mine in water for like 10 minutes or whatever, wring them out a little bit, and they're not doused, but they're nice and wet through and through. When you bake them, this will cool the edge of the cake down, and then basically it's not gonna burn on the outside, and you'll get a more even bake. Just make sure they're nice and tight because they loosen up. You could totally make your own out of just fabric strips that are scrap. I broke my sewing machine a few years ago, and I have not had a new one since. If any of my loved ones are watching, I would like a new sewing machine. All right, these are gonna go into the oven at 350 Fahrenheit for about half an hour. Keep an eye on them because you're gonna wanna watch for the centers being springy, so you could put your finger in there really quickly, and then when they're done, you'll notice the edges are pulling away from the pan. I will say it can give you a false sense of the cake being done. You're like, oh, cake's done, it looks fine, but it's actually a little bit underbaked, so you have to be very careful and just watch it carefully. My last little bit of advice I'll give you after these come out of the oven, so you just wait. These ice cream cones will make the perfect Christmas trees, but we have to do a little bit of cutting because they're giant. So for the sides, I'm actually gonna cut them kind of in half, and don't be intimidated. What you need is a nice serrated knife, which all of you, I hope, should have at home. All right, so let's cut this in half. You're gonna put one finger on the top here, and then slowly and carefully and with confidence cut down. Little motions like that. All right, so it fractured a bit. That's not a bad thing because what we're gonna do is cut this down. There we go. This'll get placed directly on the cake stand, propped up against the tree. It'll be perfect. Don't worry about any little chips. Those get covered up with buttercream. So that part's easy. The next part. For the top, this is a little large, especially for a six-inch cake, so we're just going to take it down a notch. Again, use that serrated knife and just saw, saw, saw. There we go. Do you see how easy that was? Wonderful. All right, now for the buttercream. To make the buttercream, I'm adding one pound of unsalted butter at room temperature into a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, and this is American buttercream, a favorite in my country, but many of you detest it. Here's the deal. I understand it could be a little bit sweet. You can use Italian meringue buttercream, one of my favorites. Oh, so silky and delightful. Pipes beautifully, too. You can click up here for my how to make Italian meringue buttercream video. It is to die for, and if you're not in the mood to get sugar all boiling to 240 degrees Fahrenheit and have potential burns, make a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream. Super easy and maybe the best buttercream for decorating. It is another one of my favorites. I can't decide, Swiss or Italian, which one I like more. If you have a favorite, let me know in the comments, but for now, American. One pound, in you go. Is that a lot of butter? Kind of, yeah, but it's gonna make enough buttercream for the cake inside, the cake outside, and for the Christmas trees. While it's creaming up, you can add in half a teaspoon of salt. All right, now it's ready for all that sugar. I'm adding in about a pound and a half of confectioner's sugar. You can add a little bit more, a little bit less. It's kind of up to you and the consistency that you like, as well as the sweetness. Normally, I would sift this, but I'm just using a star tip today. It's gonna be pretty hassle-free piping, so I'm just gonna dump it right in, in batches, while I mix slowly. You can also add in a dash of vanilla if you want right now, or you could add in some of that peppermint extract, too. A little bit more. Whoa. Oh, John. Let me clean up. Okay, nice and clean. No mess was ever made here. It's looking really nice and creamy right now. I want it to hold its shape just a bit more, so we're gonna add in a tish bit more. Okay, it's about half a pound left in there. All done. It's nice and creamy. It tastes good. I don't know why people hate un-American buttercream so hard. It's tasty, people. It's butter and sugar with some flavorings. Anyways, we're gonna divide this into two almost equal batches. The slightly smaller one will be for the green buttercream, and the other one is just gonna stay white. Let me tell you, dyeing that buttercream green will take a lot, and you're adding chemicals in, so if you don't wanna do that, don't do it. Here's some options. You could add in matcha powder, which is like powdered green tea. I love that flavor, and it'll give you a beautiful pastel green. I often do that when I'm piping flowers for the leaves, or if you wanted to go a little crazy, you could have some beautiful pink Christmas trees and just use a raspberry powder. You can use raspberry liquid or get powdered raspberry, and those are my natural options for you. These layers are fresh out of the oven, and just take a look at how this is pulling away from the side over here. Do you see? Last layer is out of the oven. Take a look at how this is pulling away from the edge. It's still really hot. Sometimes I'll give it a jiggle like that to make sure, and then just. Perfect. Look at this edge. It's so fluffy. I'm just like, it stinks of vanilla and butter. It is delicious. Look at this. So flat. Pipe that two-tone swirl onto the first layer. Place the second cake layer on top, and repeat the process. Now completely cover that cake in white buttercream. If it's a little unstable, go ahead and place it into the fridge to chill for just a few minutes, and it'll firm right up. Cut some ice cream cones down so they're little short baby trees. These are gonna go on top, and what we're gonna do is pipe them almost all the way around. Just leave the top naked so that you can have a place to grab it, and then set them aside. Once your cake is completely covered, smooth the side with a bench scraper and the top with an offset spatula. To get a really nice edge on top, I'll use my offset spatula and pull in as I turn slowly. Clean the tool off, pull in as you turn, and just repeat that process until you have a beautiful, smooth cake. Once your cake is all nice and smooth, it's time to add all of those pine trees on there. Just make sure they're at different heights. You don't wanna have all your trees be the same because then it won't look real. Once you're satisfied with your preliminary forest, start piping. You're gonna use your number 30 tip and all the rest of that green buttercream, and just pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe. If you don't have a number 30 tip, any star tip will do. You can even use a leaf tip. Once all the trees on the side are piped, you're going to be adding on those top little baby Christmas trees you made earlier. Pop them on and just add the last little dollop on the very top. And now it's time for our finishing touch, all the powdered sugar. Just dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, and you're gonna have a magical snowy winter scene. It's so beautiful. I love the powdered sugar. I'm so happy with the way this cake turned out. It was really fun to make. One of my favorite Christmas treats, by the way, is my Christmas tree cupcake, which was the inspiration for this cake. You can click up here if you wanna see that video. Really easy, even easier to make than this, although that's a chocolate cupcake. All right, now time for a taste. It's so good. You can really taste the butter. That's why I don't like boxed cakes, because they use oil. And for a vanilla cake, the butter is a huge component. It is so good, so fluffy, so moist. I really hope you get to make this recipe. Thanks so much for watching. Don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe.