Help me make this garish looking cake!

[VintageCakesRock]

I am going to be making a vanilla cake soon for a birthday. It will be decorated all in pastel colour buttercreams in a vintage style; this will definately be an acquired taste, think blue frosting all over with pink piping type of thing, or pink all over with blue and white piping. Hopefully you'll know the type of cake I am meaning.

1. I have my go to cake recipe all ready, but it is only for 1 x 8 inch round (not full layer cake, just the 1 half if that makes sense). Does anybody know how I can convert this to a double layer 6 inch round cake?

1. I usually use an all butter buttercream recipe, however I'm curious whether I could use mainly butter, but add a little trex shortening to stabilise the buttercream. Could anybody tell me how much butter to swap out? I still want mainly butter to not compromise taste.

Please help!

You mean icing quantities or oven temp with the smaller tins?

Tbh I always make tonnes more icing then the recipe states as it's a pain to make another batch. I would make 1.5x the icing stated.

As for oven temp. I think you could go 5 degrees hotter then just check frequently to avoid over cooking cakes never cook in the recommended time for me either. Ovens are very individual and a fan shortens cooking times often.

Thanks, I am meaning the ratio of butter to swap out for the trex, while still maintaining the real butter taste (I have the recipe already, but if anybody has a one containing both real butter and trex, that would be great). For the other point I am asking how to convert the amount of ingredients for 1 half 8 inch round into 2 x 6 inch rounds.

1/3 trex to butter. It can be as high as 1/2 but I would probably add more vanilla if using to up the flavour slightly.

Thank you so much, I'll do that.

What is trex? I've googled it and it says it is lard??

Trex is white so it helps to use it when you want to achieve colours that would be compromised by the yellow of butter.

1/3 or 1/2 should do it.

OP many US frosting recipes use equivalent of Trex, Wilton recipe is often recommended and it's half shortening to butter.

Trex for poster who asked is white vegetable fat, similar to shortening that a lot of US recipes call for. I usually only use it for certain sugarcraft things but I don't do much of that anymore so had some frozen and have been using it up in pastry, half and half butter/trex, makes lovely pastry although I don't really like using it but not dumping it! It makes great 'goop' a non stick cake tin coating, equal quantities of trex, flour, oil mixed up together and you brush it on, lasts forever in fridge, have to use quantities by volume not by weight.

Thank you, yes I'm going to go a 1/3 (the least possible) as it can taste greasy, and not nice. Hopefully that'll stabilise it, and colour better too.

Does anybody know how to convert recipe amounts for an 8 inch half layer round, to a full 2 layer 6inch round cake?

It's vegetable fat. Good to combine with non dairy butter substitutes to make more stable non dairy buttercream as without it they tend to be very soft.

I would make Swiss meringue buttercream instead - super smooth and less sweet. Works beautifully for piping.

@VintageCakesRock - what type of cake are you making? Victoria sponge or Madeira cake or something else?

A vanilla cake, it has sour cream in the recipe, and it is really good!

Volume of 1 x 8" round is 3.14 x 8 x 1
Volume of 2 x 6" rounds is 3.14 x 6 x 2
So multiply each of your recipe ingredients by 1.5 (12÷8)

Thank you so much for replying, and giving me the answer! I'm useless at volume as you can tell. I couldn't find a converter online for my specific sizes, so that's brilliant.

I never use trex in buttercream - just beat the living daylights out of the butter for AGES and add a tiny drop of violet colour to counteract the yellow tinge. You can buy whitener for butter cream too….

Thanks , I always beat it loads too, (butter for a few minutes until it looks like cream). I have heard of the violet trick, but I'd be too scared it would go wrong, and I'd end up with lilac! I didn't know you could buy whitener, I will look into this. I want the buttercream to be stable as well, and was thinking the taste may not be spoiled by 1/3 trek, and it may whiten at the same time.

I need to apologise, I've just been comparing best value takeaway pizza options (as you do) and had a sudden realisation that I gave you the wrong answer! I really hope your cakes turned out OK 😫

Volume of 1 x 8" round is 3.14 x 4² x 1
Volume of 2 x 6" rounds is 3.14 x 3² x 2
So multiply each of your recipe ingredients by 1.125 (18÷16)

So if they ended up bigger than you expected then blame me 😬

Haha, no worries. I ended up doubling my recipe, and making 2 x 8 inch rounds. Thank you for coming back on to rectify, and I will save those measurements for future use! The cake was lovely, but would I ever use Trex in any quantity in buttercream again? No!! 😂