Ruffles!!!

One of my oldest friends here is moving to Germany soon. I met her when we were working in a bar together, about a month or two after I arrived in Japan.

When we first met, I knew NO Japanese, but her English was quite good. We had to use her dictionary quite often, however, to communicate. A few months passed and after ages of not needing the dictionary, we went to consult it, but it was nowhere to be found!!

We were so surprised to realize that we no longer needed it to communicate. She did't even know where or when she'd lost it. She had simply learned English.

Needless to say, she has a knack for languages and I'm sure she will pick up German in no time.

As a farewell, I wanted to bake her a cake. About 8 months ago, I threw a bachelorette party at my place for my good friend. There were just a few of us, so I made tiny cakes - one for each of us. I made the bride-to-be's a cute little ruffle cake.




Ever since making that little one, I've been dying to make a full-size ruffle cake.





It was such fun (and totally easy) doing the ruffles. (Please just ignore the top of the cake, K wanted to "help".) Just use a tip that is wider at one end of a rectangle than the other. Point the thin end out and pipe vertical lines, squiggling back and forth.

I found that it helps if you draw vertical lines as a guide. I got a bit carried away at some points, so having the lines to guide me back was helpful.




I made a pink champagne cake (minus the traditional coconut and marshmallow frosting). It was the perfect amount of girly-ness I was hoping for.




I used this cake recipe with my go-to Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe.




The cake was nice. You could taste the champagne, but it was not overpowering at all. Just there. The vanilla SMB complemented it beautifully!

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