American Baker in Germany

American buttercream is really easy to alter. All you have to do is make a few small changes. That's what we did to make it strawberry buttercream. It's really easy. Here's how I do it. Strawberry Buttercream 1 cup (250g) butter 1000g (around 8 cups) powdered sugar 1/2-1 cup (125-250g) strawberry jam  Cream butter until creamy.  Add 1/4 of the powdered sugar.  Add a couple tablespoons of strawberry jam until the mixture becomes more of a buttercream consistency.  Add another 1/4 of the powdered sugar and another few tablespoons of strawberry jam.  Add the next 1/4 of powdered sugar.  Add more strawberry jam as needed.  Add the last of the powdered sugar.  Add strawberry jam as needed to get the consistency you want. The amount of jam you use may vary quite a bit. You may need more or less depending on the consistency of your butter and the consistency of the buttercream that you want.  But look how lovely that...

This cake was for the Kindergarten celebration of my daughter's birthday. You know you have to bring something for the kids to celebrate together. Our topic? Strawberries.  So, I baked two layers of 10-inch round strawberry cake dyed pink.  I filled it with strawberry buttercream.  And frosted it with it as well.  I made sure to frost thick enough so you couldn't see the cake through the frosting.  Then I smoothed the frosting pretty well.  Then I filled a piping bag with a French piping tip and strawberry buttercream.  Then I piped dollops onto the top of the cake.  I piped a total of eight dollops regularly spaced around the cake.  Then I piped little points at the bottom of the cake.  And finally, I placed whole strawberries between the dollops on the top of the cake.  This cake is super simple, but absolutely gorgeous.  It's one of those you can tell from the outside what's on the insid...

This cake was for my daughter's sixth birthday. She tends to have very precise ideas of what she wants for her birthday cake. This year she wanted a cake that looked like Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the Harry Potter series. We're reading the books together. I had baked three sizes of strawberry cake. 5x8 inches, 3x5 inches and 4 inch round. Here is them stacked as I envisioned them to be.  I had dyed the cake yellow and red to be for Gryffindor. I had five thin layers of 5x8 inch cake, 8 medium thick layers of 3x5 inch cake and six thick layers of 4 inch round cake with one of the cakes still with the dome.  This is how I wanted to place them on the cake board.  Then I stacked them with Swiss meringue buttercream as filling beginning with the 5x8inch cake, alternating colors.  Then I stacked the first four layers of the 3x5 inch cake.  Doweled it and added a cake board.  Then stacked the rest of the cake.  The...