So, we baked a cake with deer on top! Ha! The kids love being in the kitchen with me…especially when we are baking. Not only is it fun for them, it’s so great for their sensory and math skills – both of my kids have loved getting their hands dirty in the kitchen ever since they were basically able to stand! December always brings so many opportunities for us to play around in here…creating not only some delicious treats but also some really sweet memories.
Last week, the kids helped me mix everything up in our A2500 Ascent Series blender, which was super easy, not really messy and an hour later we had a pretty cute cake that we will be recreating for Christmas. Nico’s fave dessert is a classic vanilla cake…and he always wins…so that’s what we will be serving up. This year we will be hosting Christmas for the first time in years…and I am really looking forward to the kids waking up on Christmas Day in our house. With all the magical chaos that will be taking place, we thought we would get a head start on meal prep and we tested out baking a classic vanilla cake because it’s Nico’s favourite dessert…and well he always wins! We bought some mini Christmas trees and deer as cake toppers…and voila! We are all set to do it again Christmas Eve.
Here’s what we did:
The Cake:
We threw in the following ingredients in this order – first start with the wet ingredients and blend on variable 5 until they are mixed together. Then add the dry ingredients and blend again. Include the softened / melted butter last. Blend again for about 30 seconds.
o 1 cup buttermilk
o 4 eggs
o 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
o 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
o 2 and 3/4 cups cake flour
o 1 tablespoon baking powder
o 1/2 teaspoon salt
o 1 cup unsalted softened butter
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and lightly flour 2 8-inch round cake pans and set aside.
Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes. Remove from pans and cool completely on a wire rack. We layered these cakes together.
The Vanilla Icing:
We used the following recipe which I found on the Vitamix website (I doubled the ingredients for our cake):
Ingredients
o 1 teaspoon milk
o 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
o 1 pinch salt
o 1 cup softened butter
o 3 1/2 cup powdered sugar
Place ingredients into the Vitamix blender in the order listed and secure the lid. Select Variable 1 to start and slowly increase to Variable 10, then high (blend for 45 seconds to a minute). Please note – blend just until all powder sugar is incorporated and immediately stop or melting of butter will occur and frosting will thin out. If this does happen, just toss the buttercream mixture into the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes until set.
Lastly, one of the best parts about the machine is this self-cleaning trick! After making something like icing, it can get super sticky and hard to clean. BUT…you can blend warm water and a drop of dish soap at your machine’s highest speed, and watch it self-clean in 60 seconds!!
Enjoy!