Cotton Candy Cake

Does anyone else love thin as air, wisps of nothing spun sugar cotton candy? Pale pink sugar threads fluffing and puffing up like a beehive wig, melting into your tongue like magic.

We took Teddy to our city's annual fair this past summer and I felt inspired by the cotton candy sticks in pale bubblegum pink and light turquoise.

My plan was to make cotton candy topped cake - but I didn't realize that cotton candy deflates like a tired balloon. I had purchased a take home bag of pink and blue cotton candy to bring home for my cake project, but when I went to get it from my cake cupboard, it had hardened down to flat dehydrated blocks! Rats - I had missed my chance!

Still, I felt inspired by those beautiful colours and made this adorable pastel cotton candy coloured cake instead.

COTTON CANDY CAKE MINI TUTORIAL 

1. Using your favourite vanilla cake mix, divide batter into two medium bowls. I love Rosie at Sweetapolita's fantastic recipes for both cake and buttercream.

2. Use a tiny dab of pink gel colour for the cotton candy pink and a tiny dab of sky blue colour for the cotton candy blue. Mix batter gently until coloured.

3. Pour batter into four greased and parchment paper lined cake pans - I used 7 inch round cake pans.

4. Bake according to recipe's instructions.

5. Let cool, then frost with your favourite vanilla buttercream. I used a basketweave tip to create the fine-line ribbon look. Top with a fresh single raspberry. So cute!



Come on, take a bite! Who could resist such cute pastel cake layers?

PS - you can also find me elsewhere here: 

Craftsy! Check out my post on drool-worthy simple and pretty cakes by some of my favourite cake designers.

Handmade Charlotte! So stoked to be a new contributor to one of my favourite children's design blogs. So many beautiful ideas, delivered daily! Please visit my Fluffy Lamb Cake DIY I made for them! xo

Have an awesome weekend, cake pals! 

 xo Lyndsay

Cake, photos and styling by Lyndsay Sung // Coco Cake Land

Typography Cake Tutorial- I Love You!

Gosh, I've always loved this piping style - good old mini drop star, just filling every inch of a cake creating such a cute and vintage textured look. This cake is a real cute way to send a special message to a special someone! "Say it with cake!"

Find the whole tutorial over at my pal Melanie's blog You Are My Fave!

Happy cakeing!

xo Lyndsay

Pretty Tri-Coloured Easter Cake & Tutorial!

Spring is upon us... Easter! But hey, this cutie tri-coloured rainbow cake would work for so many other events too - birthdays, bridal or baby showers, Pride weekend, coming out parties...! So much fun! I know everyone and their dog's pet cats have been rocking these rainbow multi-coloured layer cakes, but gosh darn it, they are so pretty and so fun to make... and when you cut into it... man, you just feel this giddy satisfaction... this primary school feeling of "I did it!" 

This cake was inspired by my sweet cake pal Rosie at Sweetapolita - I recently watched her pastel swirl cake tutorial and was like, "I would like to try that!!!" So here ya go. My cake is much more... "rustic" looking than hers, as she is the MASTER! And my colours turned out way more vibrant than I had intended... I really thought I was going to make a pastel Easter cake... instead it turned out to be a little on the "crazy pants" side... hence the name.

Happy Spring, everyone! 

CRAZY PANTS EASTER CAKE TUTORIAL

You will need:

1. Three 7 x 2 inch cake pans sprayed with vegetable oil and lined with parchment paper circles (for easy cake removal - or you can butter and flour your pans, too)
2. Vanilla cake recipe enough for one 9 inch layer cake - this recipe works! Or visit my friend Rosie for some great recipes! (or, no biggie here - go with a boxed cake mix!)
3. 4 cups of vanilla buttercream. This recipe by Sweetapolita will do great!
4. Three types of gel food colouring: I used Wilton brand gel colour in Violet, Sky Blue and Fuchsia.
5. An offset spatula to frost your cake with!
6. A piping bag fitted with an open circle tip, for filling your cake layers evenly (optional)
7. A little candy egg, and a toothpick with some craft paper or washi tape for a flag (optional decoration)
8. Three medium sized bowls to mix colour into your cake batter, and into your buttercream.
9. A bench scraper to smooth and blend the sides of your cake - or you can use an offset spatula.

Okay! Mix up your cake batter according to the recipe's instructions, and then... 

Once you have your cake batter prepared, divide it evenly into three bowls. Put a teensy bit of gel food colour in each bowl - you can start with less then add more if need be. Mix gently to blend using a spatula or spoon.

Place coloured cake batter into your 7 x 2 inch cake pans. You can smooth out the top with an offset spatula to even it out in the pan if you like. Place in oven and bake according to recipe's instructions.

Once your cake layers are baked and cooled, using a serrated knife, level your cake layers so they're flat. Then, begin to layer your cake using the vanilla untinted buttercream frosting! Divide the frosting in half and use the first half for filling and crumb-coating your cake.

I used a piping bag fitted with an open circle tip to create an easy and even layer of frosting, but you can easily just use an offset spatula or even a regular old butter knife to fill your cake with.

I layered mine with the purple on the bottom, blue in the middle and pink on top... looks like a cute little hamburger now, doesn't it!?

Time for the crumb coat! This is the frosting layer that seals in those pesky crumbs.

All done! Totally ugly here but not a big deal! At this point I place it in the freezer for the crumb coat to set, about 10-15 minutes.

Now time to mix the remaining half of buttercream into three different colours. Again, I went with purple, blue and pink! Easter!

Bring your chilled cake out of the freezer. Now time to frost the colours! I started at the bottom with my offset spatula, frosting on the purple. Then I frosted on a layer of the blue - then I started from the top with the pink and will connect the pink and blue.

Doesn't this look like a 7 month old baby made this!? (not to fear... I call this a cake in progress...)

Taking your bench scraper or your offset spatula, smooth all around the cake, combining the colours while you smooth it. Okay, "smooth" is a loose term with this cake! "Smear"??

But look! Even with not the very best colour-combining and smoothing job, cake looks so cute and festive and colourful!!! I used my offset spatula to create a little swirly effect on the top of the cake. Add a little candy chocolate egg and a matching cute flag and you are ready to PARTY!

Slice it out... don't be shy! Get your fork ready, too and call your buddies to the table.

Eeks! Then freak out at how mini-exciting it is to see the insides of a multi-coloured cake!

Take even MORE pictures with a slightly different set-up! Cake photography nerd!

And even MORE pictures! ^__^

Then... your work is done... you may eat your slice now... chomp chomp...!


Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, blog buddies! Happy cakeing to all!


xo Lyndsay

Pretty On The Inside: Simple Ombre Cake Tutorial!

How about a slice of cake with that green beer?

St.Patty's Day is a "holiday" I don't think I ever partied to. Might be because I'm not a very good drinker, and I tend to avoid huge masses of drunken party animals. However, coloring everything GREEN seems like a real blast!  For an everything green party I'd serve guacamole, sliced cucumber, mint chocolate chip ice cream grasshopper pie, kale chips... okay, all those things sound kind of gross together!! But how about a good old vanilla cake with green ombre layers?!

So easy to make and always so exciting when you cut into it and the slices are so prettily colored. You can make this cake for any occasion, and follow the directions for any inside-colored cake!



You will need: 

1. Four medium sized bowls and four 7 inch round cake pans.
2. A vanilla cake recipe enough for four layers of cake.
3. Gel food colouring to make the ombre effect - I use Wilton or Americolor brand gel color. For this one I used Wilton in "Leaf Green."
4. Five cups of buttercream. You will need enough to fill the cake layers as well as make a crumb coat and pipe buttercream all over the cake.
4. An open star piping tip. For this, I used a Wilton 4B tip.
5. A piping bag
6. A cake board, cake stand or plate. I cover my own cake boards using craft paper, gluestick and a pre-purchased round cake board.
7. An offset spatula for frosting your cake - not crucial, you can also use a butter knife!

Make it!

1. Prepare your cake batter. Now, divide up your cake batter evenly into four bowls. In the first bowl, add a dab of food colouring (the gel colour goes a long way, so be careful!) and mix batter with a spatula until coloured. In the second bowl, add the same amount but then a little more. In the third bowl, add even more... and the fourth bowl will have the most food colouring. You get the idea, right? Ombre?

2. Bake the cake layers according to the recipe's instructions. Let cool, level your cakes (ie, using a serrated knife, carefully trim the cake so it's surface is flat and not rounded). Make your buttercream, and then:

Place the first layer of cake on your cake board, fill with frosting, and continue to stack the coloured layers, starting with the darkest colour first.



Then, start frosting the entire cake to create the crumb coat (the first layer of frosting). 
 

Now your cake is frosted! Get your piping bag ready. Snip off the pointed edge of the piping bag and nestle the piping tip into the bottom. Fill the piping bag with buttercream, and begin to pipe the sides of your cake!

Pipe all around the cake. I usually start at the bottom and go up the top, then pipe the top of the cake, too!



Above,  a closeup of what the 4B star tip piping looks like!

And finish your cake with a little matching party flag on top! See, no one's going to know this cake has a green surprise!!

But you may want to keep it out of reach of some excited baby hands... (half Chinese leprechaun?)



And that magic moment... a slice of pretty green ombre cake! 

Happy St.Patty's Day everyone ... ! Hope you enjoyed this short and easy little tutorial. Now I'm itching to make more ombre cakes in various colours... so fun!

Slice of cake photo by Amy Tran