Naked cakes

Naked cakes seem to be a bit of a trend, so I was keen to try out the method. Basicly, it's a style of icing a more formal or party cake, where the layers are still visible and no outer covering of frosting or icing is applied. Often fresh flowers are used for decoration.

Photo by Sarah Ryan

I decided I'd try it out so made two nice butter cakes.

After the cakes had cooled,  I split them in half to make four layers.

 

                                                     Photo by Sarah Ryan                                       Photo by Sarah Ryan

I made a vanilla flavoured sugar syrup, and a vanilla butter cream and other than the very bottom underneath layer and the very top layer, I applied sugar syrup to each layer of cake as I went and sandwiched each layer with butter cream. I also put some raspberry jam on each layer. 

 

Photo by Sarah Ryan                                       Photo by Sarah Ryan

I made sure to spread the butter cream right to the edge so that a clean line is achieved when using the spatula to smooth the edge.

 

                                                      Photo by Sarah Ryan                              Photo by Sarah Ryan

Last of all, I popped on some fresh flowers out of the garden: alstromeria, geranium, chrysanthemums. 

I certainly think that this look wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea (but I'm sure it's going to taste delicious WITH a cup of tea)....and it's so much faster than many other methods of cake decoration. So it has it's good and bad points - but it's something different!

PS. I can write up the recipes I used if anyone wants.