St. Patrick’s Day Cake

Happy St. Patricks day! I love how this cake turned out. I will defiently have to work more on striped cakes. They are so fun to make. Plus my Go-to vanilla cake is a must!  It is moist and comes out perfect every time. I have made this cake so many times (at least 6 times this month) and it never fails me *knock on wood.* Let’s get baking! 

INGREDIENTS FOR CAKE:

• 1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon fine salt
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 5 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup milk

DIRECTIONS FOR THE CAKE:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease the bottoms and sides of two 8-inch round cake pans with my homemade cake pan release.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.
3. Beat the butter, sugar and oil in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and then the vanilla until combined.
4. Alternate folding the flour mixture and the milk into the batter with a spatula, adding the flour in three additions and the milk in two, starting and ending with the flour, until just smooth. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans.
5. Bake the cake for about 35-40 min. or until toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in the pans about 10 minutes, then turn out onto cooling racks and let cool completely.

FOR ASSEMBLY:

1. Make a big batch of my buttercream frosting recipe.
2. Frost in between the layers and around the cake. Make sure to make it super thick on the outside of the cake. Take a cake comb and make lines around the cake. Freeze cake for at least 20 min. 
3. Dye frosting whatever colors you want. I did the colors of the rainbow to match the lucky charms. I did pink, green, orange, blue, and purple. Fill piping bags and cute off tip. Make it small.
4. Pipe the colored buttercream into the ridges. Go around the cake with a bench scraper and smooth out until the stripes are more even. This will take a while. If there are gaps you can pipe more onto the cake and smooth out. 
5. Once it’s to your liking the fill a piping bag with green frosting, fitted with a number 21 tip. Pipe a shell border around the top and bottom. Place lucky charm marshmallows and enjoy!

Thanks for baking with me!

~ Natalie