Polka Dot Cake

I really wanted to get this post up yesterday, but now K and I are both sick and I was super tired. I fell asleep at 8:30. What a nerd!

Yesterday one of my best friends, Hitomi, turned 34! She is one of the main reasons I learned to sew. Hitomi is an amazing sewist and makes the cutest things. I wanted to be like her. I wanted to make cute things too, so I started sewing. When I think of Hitomi, polka dots and pompom trim come to mind. I wanted to make a dot-inspired cake. I came across this cake a few weeks ago and fell in love!

I started with a Sweetapolita recipe, but I only made 1/3 of the recipe to begin with.

Then I divided the recipe into little cups and added food coloring to each cup.

Then I put the colored batter into tiny cupcake papers. I really should have divided the batter into three cups per color, but I didn't have enough cups and I didn't expect it to rise so much - whoops!

I LOVE this color combination. It looks like I did some adorable art project.

Then I baked those mini guys for about 15 minutes and let them cool. After that I got onto the main cake batter. I started by making just 2/3 of the recipe, but then I had to go back and do the final 1/3 since it wasn't quite enough to cover the dots well. If you decide to make this cake, just go ahead and make the full recipe from the start.

When the batter was ready, as the first link showed, I put a little batter in the bottom. Then added the cupcakes, but put them on their sides so they would form circles when cut.

Oh how I love these colors!!!!

Then I put batter on top and popped them in the oven. You may notice that I have old towels wrapped around the cake pans. I read this ages ago, but if you wet some strips of towel and then wrap them around the pan, it helps the cake from making a dome. It bakes up so evenly. Best trick ever!

Yay! No domes - but also not enough batter on the top. Luckily I was going to frost the cake, so no problem.

I read about the Viva paper towel trick for smoothing out frosting and gave it a go. I used this buttercream recipe. I really wanted the frosting to be white and luckily the recipe called for margarine instead of butter - wahoo! I frosted the cake and then put it in the fridge and went to bed.

I pulled it out the next morning and tried the paper towel trick to make it smooth and it worked a bit, but was certainly not perfect. I think it's possible that the frosting was just too cold? I want to give it a go again after letting it sit out for a bit.

Then I used little sugar circles to decorate the outside. I will blog about these later - tomorrow perhaps. They are so easy and so fun, but do take a bit of time.

We went to our friend's house and the daughter could not stop looking at the cake and saying how cute it was. My friend was also really stoked on it.

Eeek! I love these kids.

Then we cut it open and bam - dots on the inside! Unfortunately the dots ended up being only two colors. I was a bit bummed, but it would have been really difficult to plan it working out better. Cute nonetheless!

The little girl was so excited to see the inside and all of the kids couldn't wait to eat a piece. They were so cute.

The cake was pretty good. I didn't eat my circle becuase really, it's just sugar, but K and the other kids loved them.

I love that each piece is different. Here was a slice from snack time today.

The cake was a total hit. But what made me happier than the cake were these three kiddies.

Happy birthday, Hitomi-san!!!