My daughter Dina loves to bake… gee, I wonder who she took after? She loves to incorporate fresh fruit to her desserts, and in this cake she uses it for decorating and filling. You can choose to make vanilla or chocolate cake, or even strawberry flavoured. You can use a cake mix or make a homemade cake batter, whichever you prefer.
This isn’t really a recipe but more of how to make it type post, for those that are interested in making this cake.
You will need a variety of fresh fruit such as strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. You can use any fruit that is fresh and available to you. I had some fresh herbs in the garden that she used to decorate with as well, and I had some pomegranate seeds, so she added that as well.
The chocolate butterflies are optional and if you feeling up to it you can make a chocolate garnish, by simply melting some chocolate and making a design on a sheet of wax paper. First draw an outline of a butterfly then pipe the melted chocolate over the sketch. Place t each wing over a round surface and allow to firm up. You can use any design; freestyle works.
For the cake you will need two 8 inch or 9 inch cake pans. You also need 1 cake mix; follow instructions on the box.
Allow cakes to cool.
For the icing you can use homemade buttercream or a combination of buttercream with a whipped cream like Nutriwhip*. My daughter likes that combination, so that is what she used for this cake.
For the filling she added sliced berries and combined it with whipped cream. If you are making a vanilla cake, a spread of strawberry jam over the layer of cake is really nice.
For the icing, take about a few spoons worth and in two separate bowls colour them pink and purple. I couldn’t find the purple food colouring so we mashed some blackberries for the purple.
Crumb coat the cake, and chill. Frost the cake with the remaining frosting and add in the colour. With a spatula work it in like a water colour marbling effect.
Top the cake with the fruit and herbs on one side and try to shape it like a crescent.
That’s it. If you make everything from scratch it is a bit more time consuming, but if you are using cake mix and canned frosting, you can make this quickly and it will still look amazing!
*Nutriwhip is an oil based whipped cream that comes as a liquid. You have to whisk it until it turns into whipped cream. It is easier to work with than real whipping cream. You can combine it with buttercream, canned frosting, etc. It also holds better as well, so it is nice to work with.
For the filling, however, we used real whipping cream.