Happy Birthday Sis: Raspberry Pink Birthday Cake Tutorial!

I love this wacky wild weirdo pink raspberry birthday party cake I made to celebrate my dear sister’s 40th birthday! Sister looks like she’s 27 so it’s all good. Not that there’s a damn thing wrong with looking “older.” It’s going to happen to every one of us! Silvery grey hairs that poke out like annoying little wires, smile lines and little freckly spots showing up seemingly overnight. A photograph that betrays a face one thought was young with just a touch of piggy jowly-ness. A little more junk in the trunk that is impossible to shed away, moon pock marks on thighs and butts, hands looking suddenly weary and vein-covered. Welcome to the body of an older woman, people! Except my sister. Dang woman is fit as a fiddle, sweats it up at power yoga and can do a full on HANDSTAND. She’s amazing, beautiful, strong as buckets and buckets of steel, an incredible mom, bright as the most colourful star – and a wonderful sister to me.

So here it is: A wacky yet simple and let’s even say simply magical pink birthday cake tutorial for ya.

You will need: 

A two or three layer baked and cooled round cake. I tinted my vanilla cake pink and studded the cake batter with fresh raspberries.

4 cups of vanilla buttercream, tinted pink with a touch of pink gel food colouring

An offset spatula to crumb croat and frost your cake

A piping bag fitted with an open star tip

A bar of white chocolate (or any thin, high quality bar that will break into triangular shards)

Fresh raspberries for decor

Start with a triple layer cake. I made a vanilla cake tinted light pink and studded the cake batter with fresh raspberries.

Frost, fill and smooth your cake like the cake nerd you are. I used a light pink vanilla buttercream to frost my cake. Check out this post on how to frost a cake if you need to brush up!

After you’ve frosted your cake to the final coat, tint the remaining buttercream a darker shade of pink, or a contrast colour like mint green. I like the darker shade of pink simply because you can easily just add some more pink gel colour to your already-made pink buttercream. Fill a piping bag fitted with a Wilton 4B tip to make this cute shell border. Simply “pipe out and pull” to make a shell with a tail-like shape. Pipe the next shell on top of the “tail” and so-on and so-forth until you’ve made an entire border.

Take it to the top! Here is where the decorating fun begins. I went kind of random-zone on the top, except I tend to anally place my decorative objects and piped blobettes with the same amount of space in between everything. Sort of a random-yet-even vibe.

I used fresh raspberries and this Lindt White Strawberry Excellence bar as well as piped buttercream blobettes for the decoration. I broke the pieces into their natural squares and then broke triangle pieces off of the squares!

I was going for a shard-y playful and fun Katherine Sabbath vibe with this cake! Speaking of which – I have an interview with her coming up on this here blog! Woot! Part of a new interview series on Coco Cake Land where I interview some pretty sweet people in the cake, pastry and/or creative world. STOKED.

I piped some blobettes larger than others, and even placed a raspberry on top of a few – you get the idea.

A view from the top! If a bird flew over this cake right now, it would swoop down and eat a raspberry. If it was a seagull, it would swoop down for the white chocolate pieces. Or the chocolate bar wrapper. Damn scavengers.

I made this cool times hand stamped birthday cake sign too – I just love my mini alphabet letter stamp set. Sigh. I really can’t believe my sister is 40. That means I’m up next in a few short years – my two older sisters are both in their 40s now! Eeks. I don’t get it, Father Time. I can still see us playing and romping around at our beloved childhood home, black bowl-cut little turd brats, knocking over each other’s Lego houses and fighting over the Barbie wedding dress, eating seaweed gummy bears but dreaming of grape soda (my mom was a health nut). Time is going by a little too fast these days, guys – don’t you think? Happy happy 40th birthday to my beloved sis Shelley! May your 40th and beyond be filled with happiness. xo Lyndsay