So our 7yo’s birthday party is tomorrow, and I decided to actually bake the cake at home. Most likely because I’m still unemployed from my layoff last November, so money’s tight but time is not. And I wanted to make it something spectacular. I’m not what I would call an accomplished baker, but I can definitely follow directions. I’ve baked cakes before, but I don’t think I’ve ever iced one, and I’ve certainly never made a frozen buttercream transfer.

I went with this recipe for a vegan cake. My housemate baked one a couple months ago, and it was pretty darn great. I made two of these, one with soy milk, apple cider vinegar, plain vegetable oil, and no almond extract. The other I used almond milk, rice vinegar, peanut oil, and half/half almond/vanilla extract. One I put a bunch of blue color in, the other a bunch of red. Then I cut the cakes in half laterally. The soy cake did not do so well. It was sticky, and a little collapsy. The almond cake was beautiful.

For the filling between each layer, I made a double batch of this strawberry filling. Well, except instead of five cups I just emptied two one-pound cartons. I alternated flavor/color layers, on a home-made cake board that I threw together from boxes and parchment paper.

I iced the cake with this buttercream frosting recipe. I made one and a half times the recipe, and added green color. That website has recipes for vegan butters, but I saw Earth Balance had sticks so I just grabbed those. I set the cake on our lazy Susan, which made the whole process much simpler.

And then the really neat part? I basically just watched a bunch of YouTube videos before even attempting my frozen buttercream transfer. I traced over the Mario picture just by draping parchment paper over my laptop screen and lightly penciling over the image. It ended up looking… better than I’d feared, but not as good as I’d hoped. I didn’t really mix enough of his skin tone, so he ended up… really swarthy?

I’ll update this tomorrow with a picture of how the cake looks cut.