Strawberry and Vanilla Layer Cake

I celebrated my birthday yesterday by making myself a huge cake.  Who doesn't need a huge cake on their birthday? 

You may recall I made the hubby a Rainbow Cake for his birthday last year, and it gave me the idea do something similar for my own cake, but in pretty girly pinks.

I used the same base as the Rainbow Cake - recipe of which is found here at Whisk Kid.  Now I had great intentions of adding pureed strawberries and real vanilla ... but come on, 3 children under 5 ... some days your great intentions just don't pan out.  So I added Strawberry Essence (4 teaspoons) in the butter and sugar creaming process and it tastes lovely.  Pah, who needs fresh fruit huh?

I followed the same instructions to make the cake, just swapping the rainbow colours for pink.  I separated my cake mixture into 6 bowls, and using the same pink gel, added a small amount in the first bowl, gradually working up to a larger amount in the last bowl to get a graduated pink effect.

I gave the cake a strawberry flavoured buttercream crumb coat, before icing in roses in plain buttercream tinted pink.  I used my Wilton 1M tip to get the rose effect, and you can google this as there are plenty of tutorials out there showing how to do this.

I can also admit here I was going to sandwich the layers together with Strawberry infused White Chocolate Ganache .... next time huh.  Some days, things just don't come together, but the end result is still amazing.

Must be morning tea time.