Marshmallow flower birthday cake

Serves:

Ingredients

• Meadow Lea or 250g butter, softened
• 250g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tbsn vanilla extract
• 290g plain flour
• half a tspn baking powder
• 185ml (3/4 cup) buttermilk

Icing

• 100g butter, softened
• 200g icing sugar (sifted) or icing mixture if you need to cut time
• 1 tspn vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste
• 2 tbsn milk

Marshmallow flowers

• 10-12 marshmallows (mix of pink and white)
• hundreds and thousands
• small pink lollies to make the bud of the flower

Method

Preheat oven till 180 and grease a 24cm springform tin.

Beat butter and sugar till creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each egg goes in. Add vanilla.

Sift in flour and baking powder. Beat well and add the buttermilk a little at a time till you have a thick creamy batter.

Scrape batter into greased cake tin and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer poked in the dead centre comes out clean.

Cool completely before icing.

To make the icing, mix butter with icing sugar. Add vanilla and milk gradually and stop when you have a smooth but stiff icing. Spread generously over the cake

To make the marshmallow flowers, take a marshmallow and hold it on its side. Using scissors, cut through the middle once, then with each half cut through the middle again. You should have four petals.

Mold the edges of each petal by pinching them slightly and dip the sticky side of the marshmallow in the hundreds and thousands.

On a plate, arrange the marshmallow petals around the small lolly till the arrangement looks like a flower.

Carefully place on the cake.

Notes:

• As this is a vanilla cake, it is really worth spending a little extra on the real-deal vanilla – either vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract. No vanilla essence please!
• You can create as many or as few marshmallow flowers as you like (or your patience allows!). I just stopped when I thought my cake looked artfully decorated!
• This recipe was created by Peita Mages for Kidspot, New Zealand.

Serving Suggestions

Note