Hi guys, I'm Laura Vitale and on this episode of Laura in the Kitchen, I'm going to bring
you what I like to call my Confetti Birthday Cake.
Now, my birthday is in November, I have never had a birthday party in the Summer.
So, what did I do last weekend? Celebrated my own birthday. With a birthday cake!
And I figured I'd share this recipe with you because so many of you write me and send me
e-mails saying 'Can you show me a birthday cake?'.
Now, you know I don't make any sort of fancy cakes with fondant and all these cool characters,
that's just not my style - I like really good food! And I love anything homemade.
So this is a gorgeous fluffy, light vanilla cake with a gorgeous buttercream, so it is
absolutely amazing, let me take you over the ingredients so we can get started!
You'll need all purpose flour, baking powder, salt, granulated sugar, egg whites, unsalted
butter, softened at room temperature, a little bit of sour cream, some whole milk, vanilla
extract and I've got some jimmies!
Now, this is what's going to go all the way through my batter, and it's going to be so
good!
Now, comment below and let me know what your childhood birthday cake was, now to be completely
honest with you, when I was a child, I didn't want a birthday cake, I wanted pastiera. That
was the birthday cake of choice! But I would love to know from you - And I would love to
know when your - your birthday month and what the cake that you would like to have.
And maybe you might see it pop up on Laura in the Kitchen!
So, I thought that might be fun!
I'm just taking my egg whites and I'm going to use my standing mixer to whip these up.
I'm going to whip these until they've got stiff peaks and I'll show you what it looks
like when they're there. It should take a couple minutes.
Beautiful!
Now, I don't need the egg whites at this very moment, I actually need them later on in the
recipe, but like I did previously on a different episode, if I need to whip the egg whites
and do it in the standing mixer, I might as well get them done and out of the way because
you can't whip egg whites in a dirty bowl, so you want to get those done and out of the
way. So now that that's done - and don't worry if a little bit remains, that's totally fine!
I'm going to put this back on, I'm going to switch to a paddle attachment and I'm going
to add - get my beautiful egg whites, look at that - out of the way.
I'm going to add my softened butter, really important that it's nice and soft.
And my sugar. I'm going to get these nice and creamy and fluffy. My excitement is making
me stutter, but this is going to be gorgeous, and now you've noticed we haven't added whole
eggs, and that's because we want this to be a gorgeous white fluffy cake, it's absolutely
delicious - really a treat, I have to say, but so worth it! Especially if it's your birthday.
It's my birthday and I will eat cake all I want! Ha!
It's my pretend birthday anyway!
I'm just going to whisk this up, or mix it until it's nice and fluffy.
That's looking good, I'm going to add a splash of vanilla extract and at this point, I'm
also going to add my sour cream. I'm not adding very much but this little tiny bit is going
to go a long way and give you the fluffiest thing ever - the fluffiest cake ever, but
if you don't have it, you can use yogurt, if you don't have yogurt, just use a little
extra milk - it'll be totally fine.
So, raise this up, get these combined, and in the meantime I am just going to take a
quick second to mix together my flour, baking powder and salt. You don't have to do it perfectly.
Just want them to be pretty much mixed together.
Now, I"m going to add half of my flour - about half.
And half of my milk.
Bring this back up, mix it together and then you add the rest of your flour, the rest of
your milk and your batter is almost done!
That's looking gorgeous, I'm going to add my jimmies in now, and the jimmies are really
the best kind of sprinkle confetti to use for this, but by all means, you can use anything
that you prefer, this is just what I prefer.
I'm going to just take that off now.
I want to be able to fold in the egg whites by hand, that way I can make sure that they're
not being over mixed and they deflate. But, totally forgot to tell you that the first
thing you want to do, of course, is get your oven preheated to 350F, get a couple of 9
inch baking pans, or cake pans, whatever you call them, line them with parchment paper
and spray them well with some non-stick spray.
Those are ready and waiting.
And now what I'm doing, I'm just taking my spatula, and I like to mix everything from
the bottom, up.
Look how gorgeous that is.
And now, I'm going to take my egg whites - I'll do half at a time - and mix that in there,
this is going to be just beautiful and it's going to help the cake rise and it's just
stunning!
Just going to mix that up.
Once it's all mixed, you want to divide the batter evenly, or as even as you can manage
among your baking pans, or your cake pans.
Okay, now these are going to go into my preheated oven at 350F for about 30-35 minutes or until
they're fully cooked, and then we'll get going on making the buttercream which if you love
wedding cake frosting, that's what a buttercream is, it is just.. ah! The stuff of dreams.
Okay, let's pop this in.
My cakes baked for about 30 minutes and I've let them cool completely on a wire rack, and
now what I've done with one of them - they're not too domed, because remember, we didn't
add the egg yolks, we just sort of whipped the egg whites and it falls a bit, kind of
like a pavlova almost.
What I did, I put it on a cake stand and then I just put a few pieces of parchment paper
around so that the cake stand itself doesn't get dirty once i go ahead and frost it.
We're going to make a really simple buttercream and it really couldn't be easier. The first
thing you're going to do is you need to start with butter that's been softened at room temperature
- that is so, so crucial! You absolutely need it to be at the proper stage.
So what I have here is a good amount of butter, because again, this is buttercream and I'm
making this in my standing mixer just because it's easier and needs to whisk for a long
time, so just going to pop that in.
Just going to add some vanilla extract - about a tablespoon of it - because it is a vanilla
buttercream after all.
And I'm just going to whisk this up until just the butter starts, you know, gets going,
and then i have some confectioner's sugar here and some whole milk.
Just going to wait for this to kind of get a head start and then we'll add in the sugar.
Okay, now what I also have here that I failed to mention is just a small pinch of salt,
and because this is all confectioner's sugar - which I know is a lot - but it is a buttercream,
you just need to add a little salt to cut all the sweetness.
It really does - it's a great balance.
I'm just going to add my sugar, trying to not get all over the place, and I think I
did pretty well.
Let's see.
Yeah.
Pretty well. And just a splash of milk, only a couple tablespoons of milk.
And now I'm going to get this up and get it going and mixing, and this could take up to
ten minutes, I mean buttercream goes from messy, to crumbly, to perfection, so you just
need to have patience and the great thing is you're not doing it by hand, you're using
a standing mixer, so it makes life a lot easier.
Just going to let that continue to go, go, go until it's the perfect consistency and
I'll show you what it looks like when it's there.
That is perfection!
It took a good four minutes of mixing, but, I mean look at that!It's so fluffy. Look at
that!
So worth the wait.
So worth it. And yes, again, it's really rich but I promise you this is a once in a while
treat - it's like a wedding cake, you don't eat it very often and most of the time, frostings
that are used on wedding cakes are buttercream.
So I'm just going to mix - I get like immense pleasure when it comes to buttercream because
if you make buttercream at home, then you know the consistency that you are looking
for, so there's just something about it that just gives me great pleasure, so this is completely
done, and now we'll get going on frosting.
I'm just going to take a little bit of it, not too much, about I'd say a third.
And I'm just using an offset spatula here, a flat spatula to just smear this, you don't
have to go all the way to the edge, although it doesn't matter because we are going to
cover the whole thing.
Mmm, I can't wait to have a slice of this, you have no idea!
If your birthday is in the Summer, jealous.
Very jealous.
Take the remaining frosting.
Trying to get it all out of here.
Now I have - my birthday is in November, and I remember one year my mother threw a birthday
party for me in the Summer because I remember crying because all my friends when I was a
child - their birthdays were in warmer months, so they could have parties outside, and I
never could, so I remember my mother once threw me a party in like the middle of July
which was amazing. So, I envy those who have Summer birthdays because they get to be outside
and have parties.
But, I'm just going to frost this, as you can see I'm draping down and then this is
where I love my rotating cake stand, and this is why, by the way, you put parchment down
because if that were to happen, especially if you are anything like me, you are a complete
and total mess when you frost cakes - it helps a lot.
And then I just like to take the top and just do little swirls like that.
You don't have to do this, clearly I'm not a master at decorating cakes, it is just my
way of making it look fancy.
It's terrible, I know.
Decorating cakes is not my forte - okay?
Or my mother's.
This is why the parchment is so beautiful, because now, you get to take the parchment
off and you have no mess on your hands.
Don't ya love when that happens?
No mess, and then you look like a pro and then you don't tell your friends that this
is the trick, that way they're like 'How did you manage to do that' and you're like 'I'm
that good! I know!'.
And then I'm going to take additional jimmies, because I want everyone to see that this is
a confetti birthday cake. And I'm going to put them all over the top.
The more the merrier when it comes to jimmies!
Now, somehow, there's a plate and a fork in front of me.
Which leads me to believe that even though it's only my pretend birthday, I should still
have a piece of cake.
So I'm going to do it!
I'm going to go in for it!
Going to go in for that right there.
Oh, that's going to be a big piece Laura!
But it is your pretend birthday, so you really should indulge.
Waaaaa!
Now, if you don't like as much frosting, half the recipe - make half the amount of frosting,
it'll be a really thin layer but hey, it's your pretend birthday, you do what you want!
Look at that!
Look at the jimmies all the way through.
Look!
If you had a confetti cake for your birthday, thumbs up this video.
And I love you, and I'm jealous of you. I really do like my pastiera.
That's where it's at!
Mmm hmm..
It's such a beautifully flavored cake, that buttercream is like that wedding frosting
that we all know and love and we get to eat like maybe once a year.
Absolutely divine.
Go to LauraintheKitchen.com to get this recipe, I hope you have enjoyed spending time with
me, let me know what your favorite birthday cake is because I would love to recreate it
for your special day.
Thank you for watching and I'll see you soon!
Bye bye!