Purple Ombre Cake With Buttercream Frosting

It was my mother in law's birthday this week and my daughter and I were bound and determined to make Nana the most fabulous cake she had ever seen.  As with most things I do, I found myself saying "NEVER AGAIN!!!!!" over and over, but the end result was really quite impressive and DELICIOUS if I do say so myself. Most importantly, Nana was happy (she's the baker in our family so I was happy to have impressed)!   As hard as this looks to make it wasn't.  Just plan on it taking you all day and you're good to go! ;)

So....I started out with my cake recipe.

CAKE RECIPE

Ingredients:

• 2 boxes of plain white cake mix 
• 2 cups of cour cream 
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 6 large eggs 
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. 
• Gel Food Color

Directions:

1. Preheat over to 350 degrees
2. Grease as many cake pans as you have (I only had two!)
3. Mix cake mix, sour cream, oil, eggs and vanilla on low until the batter is combine and thickened. 
4. Divide your cake into as many bowls as you will make layers.  I had 8 layers - 8 bowls.  
5. Begin adding your color to each bowl starting light to dark.  A little of this goes a long way so start slow. 
6. Once you have your cake colors mixed, pour each color into it's own separate cake pan and bake for 12 minutes, or until the cake springs back when pressed. 
7. Allow your cake to cool in the pan on a wire rack for at least 20 minutes. 
8. Remove the cake from pan and allow to cool completely for 30 minutes. 
9. Stack and frost! 

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING:

This was used to frost the cake and in-between the layers. This was NOT used for the roses.  

Ingredients:

• 4 ounces unsalted butter, softened 
• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened 
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

Directions:

1. In your mixer, combine butter and cheese on low
2. SLOWLY add the powder sugar until smooth and creamy. 
3. Add vanilla extract

ASSEMBLY

Starting with the lightest cake (or darkest if you choose to do dark to light), place your first cake on a cake stand and frost the top of the first cake with the cream cheese frosting.  Continue to stack the cakes from light to dark frosting the top of the cake (between each layer).  Once the cakes are stacked the cake might look a little haggard...at least mine did.  I'm sure that in the fancy world of baking you are supposed to trim the cakes so that they don't look so awkward and uneven but I wasn't about to sacrifice my cakes to a knife without really knowing what I was doing, so i just stacked them up and frosted the sides to cover up the imperfections.   It took quite a bit of frosting to fill the gaps, but it ended up looking perfect! 

BUTTERCREAM FROSTING
This was used for the roses! 

Ingredients:

• 2 cups salted butter (4 sticks) 
• 8 cups of powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup of heavy cream 

Directions:

1. Using a paddle beater, beat butter for 3 minutes
2. Add confectioners sugar until mixed
3. Add vanilla extract and heavy cream and beat on high for 3 minutes 
4. Separate your frosting into three bowls and again, add coloring from light to dark. 
5. FROST!  The video below was very helpful! 

Sorry the pictures weren't very good!  I REALLY didn't expect this to turn out.  Next time I make it (hahaha!!!) I will take better pictures! Please let me know if you have any questions.

Even my dishes were ombre!