pink strawberry and vanilla birthday cake.

I made this cake for a friend's birthday, so I can't show you a picture of a slice nor its interior, but I can tell you how it tastes, and it is one word- delicious.

I baked a half quantity of Smitten Kitchen's yellow cake and frosted it with a whipped vanilla frosting from Sweetapolita. The buttermilk in the yellow cake made it fluffy and moist. It was a tad sweet but all in all, a good recipe. I didn't follow the recipe for the frosting to a T- I used 1.5x the amount of icing sugar called for because I wanted the frosting to be thicker and more stable. And I omitted the vanilla bean, substituting the equivalent of vanilla extract instead. Despite the extra sugar, the frosting wasn't as sweet as I thought it would be. I may have compromised on the nearly flawlessly creamy consistency of the original frosting because adding more icing sugar means that more sugar granules are introduced, no matter how small they are. Still, the frosting was ridiculously creamy, fluffy and light, and it melts on your tongue and disappears in a aromatic poof of vanilla. If you're looking for a traditional American buttercream, I strongly recommend you try this recipe.

I split the cake into three layers and filled them with strawberry jam. To signal the strawberry element in this cake, I dyed the frosting a pastel pink. I also mixed a few tablespoons of confetti in (yes, right into the frosting), and frosted the cake, with sprinkles in the frosting and all. I think the colors of confetti don't run as easily as other kinds of sprinkles, which was why I chose it. To be on the safe side though, I chilled my frosting until it was firmer before mixing them in.

Finally, I used my spatula to do some funky grooves in the top of the cake and showered some gold sprinkles, if that is what I can call them. They're not made of sugar; they are like super thin pieces of gold foil each shaped like a miniature oval donut.

Pink, gold and rainbow. I like this color combination.