Purple Ombre Cake- tutorial

I love ombre. If you have read my blog from the start, that shouldn't be news to you. I especially love ombre on cakes. My dearest friend was celebrating her birthday- and she LOVES purple, so I thought it was the perfect occasion to make a purple ombre cake. 

While I was at it, I thought I'd take some pics to show you the process too. So here you go!

Take your vanilla cake mix and divide it into 4 equal portions. I used 1 box of cake mix for a 4-tiered 6 inch round cake.

 Add gel food color to each portion, adding more to each consecutive bowl. Here it shows that I put 1 drop into the first bowl, 2 in the second, 3 in the third, etc. but that's not all I used.

In order to get this color gradient from dark to light, I continued to add more until they looked like this.

 Since I only had one pan of the size I needed, I had to bake them each separately. They only took about 12 minutes each for a 6 inch pan. 

For your filling, you want a super thin layer so as not to distract form the color gradient. Most of the time I'll just spread a thin layer of vanilla buttercream, but this time I decided to make a tangy, fresh filling that had a purplish tinge to it. I knew it would need to pack a lot of flavor to be noticed in such a thin layer in this cake. So I took a handful of blackberries and about a 1/2 cup of lemon curd and mashed it up.

The result was both beautiful and delicious.

Next, I made some buttercream and, just like with the cake mix, I used the gel color to color the buttercream in the same 4 shades of purple. I adde them to 4 different piping bags fitted with a coupler with no tip, so I could get a nice, fat stream of frosting.

Once the cake is filled and stacked from darkest to lightest, cover the cake with a very thin layer of buttercream. Then, use the frosting to "paint" the colors over the corresponding sections of cakes with a butter knife of this offset spatula.

Using an offset spatula or putty scraper, smooth out the frosting to prep it for your decoration. It doesn't need to be perfect.

 Now, take your piping bag filled with your darkest frosting and pipe a large dot of frosting at the base of the cake. Using a butter knife or small offset spatula, spread out the dot toward the right. Pipe another dot on the tail of the last and spread it out exactly like the last. Continue this around the cake layering this pattern with each color until the side of the cake is covered.

Once you get to the top of the cake, repeat this process with the last color making consecutive circles until the top of the cake is covered as well.

Since it is a buttercream cake, make sure to keep it refrigerated if you plan on transporting it so it can develop a crust and not damage the design you've created.

My favorite part- the inside of the cake.

Here I am with my dear friend Mandy! She loved her purple ombre cake! Happy birthday Mandy! ox