Last night I conquered two of my (many) fears: decorating a layered cake and being social. I have made countless layered cakes in the past and I would argue that this blog started with many, many cakes. I can make a cake but having to bring a layered cake to an event is a whole different story, especially when everyone else attending the social are talented home and professional bakers. I’m here to report back that a) I have survived my very first cake social and b) I had a really good time despite being very overwhelmed and nervous at first.
The cake social is hosted by We Should be Friends and Thumn’s Dinner Club. I first learned about the event on social media as one does, when a baker from the a previous cake social posted a video of the event on her page. Thumn’s backyard was the perfect venue of a cake gathering and all the cakes at the first event were so beautiful and inspiring. I’ve already dreamt of going to an event where you’re surrounded by cakes, much like Cake Picnic. I’m always so envious of larger cities that host Cake Picnic events (hopefully Vancouver will be one of the tour stops next year) and this cake social was the perfect garden party that captures the essence of Cake Picnic for my city. To attend cake social, you either apply as a baker or as an attendee. When you’re selected as a baker, you asked to bring a cake that feeds 12 people as well as serving utensils. As an attendee, your only ask is to bring an appetite for four large slices of cake of your choice. At the beginning of the event, each baker gives a small introduction on themselves as well as the cake they’ve brought to the event and inspiration behind the cake. When the clock hit 7pm, each attendee was given a large box and could go up to the bakers with the four cakes they wanted to try the most. After the attendees received their cake slices, the bakers also get to try each other’s cakes. It was so hard to choose which cakes I wanted to try the most because so many of them looked incredible.
The cake I brought was inspired by one of my favourite Chinese desserts, mango sago. I recently made a mango sago pie and my goal for this cake was to capture the essence of mango sago as well as use some of the components in that pie recipe. I decided to make my cake the morning of the social so the cake is as fresh as can be. Things were off to a rocky start (cake layers got stuck in their pans and I stepped in some broken glass), but after a second round of baking, I had all the components for my mango sago cake. I made four layers of vanilla cake, and between each layer of cake was a mango cream cheese filling, fresh mangoes, and vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. The cake was topped with sago pearls and more fresh mangoes. My go-to decorating style for layered cakes is a naked cake with fresh florals, but for this cake, I wanted to use decorating techniques I haven’t tried before. I knew I wanted a big squiggle of buttercream going down the sides of the cake and buttercream nests for dollops of the mango cake filling. Using a wide ribbon piping tip and Sultan piping tip achieved just that (after some redos because who knew piping a squiggle ribbon at a 90 degree angle was such a science?!). I finished the cake with some edible gold and glitter spray so the cake would glimmer in the setting sun.
Here are some highlights from my very first cake social:
![day two: sparkly matcha neapolitan shortbread cookies ✨
the instructions might seem confusing, but if you watch the video to see how the different flavour layers are stacked, it will make much more sense! these slice and bake cookies freeze extremely well so you can make the dough now and bake them off when you want to gift them. (makes 40-44)
vanilla dough:
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g (6 tbsp) powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
matcha dough:
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g (6 tbsp) powdered sugar
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
2 tsp culinary matcha powder
1/4 tsp salt
strawberry dough
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g 6 tbsp) powdered sugar
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
2 tbsp freeze-dried strawberry powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg white
coarse sanding sugar
for the vanilla dough, combine butter and powdered sugar in a bowl. mix until smooth. add vanilla. add flour and salt and mix until no dry streaks remain. do the same for the matcha and strawberry doughs in separate bowls
place one portion of the dough between two pieces of parchment paper and roll into a 5 x 9-inch rectangle that is about 1/4-inch thick. slide rolled out dough onto a baking sheet and freeze for 10 min until firm. repeat this step with the other portions of dough
remove the top piece of parchment from each slab and stack the strawberry, vanilla, and matcha dough layers. cut the slab down the middle the long way to form two 2.5 x 9-inch rectangles. with one half, carefully swap the order of the layers (example: if the first half of the dough is stacked svm, swap the second half so it’s msv. this will ensure that same flavour squares don’t stack on each other). stack the halves. press the layers gently to adhere them. return the stacked dough to the freezer for another 10min
[recipe cont’d in comments]
#christmasbaking #christmascookies #holidaybaking #holidaycookies #cookiedecorating](https://constellationinspiration.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
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