It’s been all about cake and fondant around here for the last month — starting with a Gatsby Cake and ending with a pretty Flower Cake, both featuring a bit of fondant work and the BEST buttercake recipe ever!
🎉 Gatsby Cake & Flower Buttercake
Firstly, my apologies for the lack of posting over the last month! I’ve been otherwise occupied with my first ever paid baking gig — a Gatsby-themed cake for a 30th birthday party.
A few weekends of testing things out and then a big weekend of baking resulted in this two-tiered creation:
- Bottom tier: red velvet
- Top tier: buttercake
- Covered in buttercream and then black, white, and gold fondant.
- Gold decorations made with edible gold lustre + rose spirit.
I was pretty pleased with how it turned out, if I do say so myself.
🌸 The Flower Cake
After dropping off the Gatsby cake, I was left with a major cake craving. So I whipped up this flower cake to satisfy it.
This cake also uses my go-to buttercake recipe — a melt & mix method that’s light, moist, and basically foolproof.
With fondant still on my mind, I used leftover pieces to make fondant flowers. You can skip them and it’ll still be delicious — but they’re super fun to make.
🧈 Buttercake Recipe
Ingredients:
- 250g butter, melted
- 2½ cups plain flour
- 1¾ cups caster sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 4 eggs
- 1½ cups milk
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Method:
- Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease and line a 20cm round tin.
- Place all ingredients in the bowl of a mixer.
- Beat 2–3 minutes until well combined.
- Bake for 1 hr 20 mins, or until skewer comes out clean.
- Cool in tin 5 mins, then turn out to cool completely.
🧁 Vanilla Buttercream
- 250g butter, softened
- 2½ cups icing sugar, sifted
- 1 tbsp milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Beat butter 4–5 mins until light and fluffy.
Add icing sugar and beat another 7–10 mins until pale and soft.
🌼 Fondant Flowers (Optional)
- Ready-to-roll fondant
- Gel food colouring
- Flower cutters
- Divide fondant into 3 balls and tint each one.
- Roll out to 2–3mm thick, cut out flowers.
- Keep unused fondant covered to prevent drying.
🎂 Assembly
- Level cake top. Slice into two layers.
- Place first layer on a plate, spread with buttercream.
- Add second layer, cover top and sides with buttercream.
- Smooth with a spatula.
- Decorate with fondant flowers in any pattern you like.
And that’s it! Two totally different cakes — one glam, one sweet — both based on this one buttercake recipe I come back to again and again.
Want more creative cakes? Try Spaghetti & Meatballs Cake or Maple Bacon Cupcakes.