Origami Cake With Buttercream Frosting

I recently completed another trip around the sun and decided to make myself a cake to celebrate the occasion. I decided to make an origami cake that I had seen floating around online, but with my own take. Most of the cakes I saw online used chocolate ganache, but I am not fond of ganache so I decided to make the cake with buttercream frosting instead. This was a fun and challenging project and I was very pleased with the results! I learned a few things along the way that I'll share with you to make your attempt easier, if you decide to make yourself a cake as well! This cake came out really fancy looking and while it took some time, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to make! Let me show you how to do it.

For the cake:

3 2/3 cups cake flour

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter (3 sticks), softened

3 large eggs + 2 additional egg whites, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups buttermilk, at room temperature

For the frosting:

2 cups unsalted butter (4 sticks), softened

2 cups Crisco (2 sticks)

4 pounds powdered sugar (2 bags)

3 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp salt

6-8 tablespoons heavy whipping cream

purple food coloring

Additional:

sifter

offset spatula

cake collar plastic

cardstock

melting chocolate wafers

tooth picks

parchment paper

piping bag with decorating tip or ziplock baggie

For the cake:

3 2/3 cups cake flour

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter (3 sticks), softened

2 cups sugar

3 large eggs + 2 additional egg whites, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups buttermilk, at room temperature

This cake recipe came from Sally's Baking Addiction, make sure to pop over there to get her full story behind this recipe (and check out her other awesome recipes too). I have made cake from scratch several times before and thought this recipe looked like a good vanilla cake. Any cake recipe will probably work for this project, though I'm not sure if boxed cake mix would work as it would probably be too soft. Make sure to use cake flour in this recipe, there's too much cake flour here to reasonably use a substitute.

To make the cake:

In a large bowl, sift together 3 2/3 cups cake flour, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 teaspoons baking powder and 3/4 teaspoon baking soda. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, whip the room temperature butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Add in the eggs and egg whites, one at a time, and beat to combine. Add in vanilla and beat briefly. The mixture may look a little lumpy at this point, but don't worry, that is normal.

Add in the flour mixture 1/2 cup at a time. Turn off the mixer between additions to prevent flour from flying everywhere. Beat on a low speed until all the flour is incorporated. The mixture will be fairly dry.

Slowly add in the buttermilk and mix until combined. Use a scraper to make sure everything at the bottom of the bowl gets incorporated properly. The mixture will be pretty thick.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Once the cake batter is ready, prepare the baking pans. Trace the bottom of your baking pans on a piece of parchment paper and cut a circle out slightly smaller so it fits nicely in the bottom of the pans. Spray the pans and the parchment paper with cooking spray. Divide the cake batter into three equal parts. I used three 9" baking pans and spread the cake batter with an offset spatula.

Bake in the preheated oven for 24-26 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Place cake layers face down on cooling racks until completely cooled.

For the frosting:

2 cups unsalted butter (4 sticks), softened

2 cups Crisco (2 sticks)

4 pounds powdered sugar (2 full bags)

3 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp salt (+ additional if you want to cut the sweetness a little more)

6-8 tablespoons heavy whipping cream

purple food coloring

Full disclosure: this cake requires a lot of frosting! This is the most frosting I've ever personally made in one go and it was definitely the biggest mess I've ever made making frosting too. This is a crusting buttercream recipe from Rose Bakes, make sure you go over to her site and check out her story behind the recipe. I love buttercream frosting, and thought a crusting buttercream would be best because I thought it would hold the shapes on the side of the cake and not fall off or melt at room temperature.

The original recipe says to make all the frosting at the same time, which is how I made the biggest mess ever in my kitchen. I would recommend, and have provided directions below, to make the frosting in 2 batches. The point of making it all at once is to help prevent whipping too much air into the frosting, but I don't think having some air whipped in is worth the mess that resulted from doing it all at once. I also had a really difficult time getting all the ingredients to mix together thoroughly enough in my stand mixer. I ended up scooping everything out of the mixer and then put it back in in batches to have the mixer combine.

Anyway, on to how to make the frosting....

In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, start with 1 cup of unsalted butter (2 sticks) and 1 cup of Crisco (1 stick), all at room temperature. Beat those together until well combined.

Add in 1.5 teaspoon of vanilla and .5 teaspoon of salt. Adjust the amount of salt to your liking. The more salt you add, the less sweet the frosting will be, which might be helpful considering how much frosting this cake has. Beat to combine.

Turn off the mixer and add in 2 pounds of powdered sugar, a half cup at a time. Beat on LOW. Scrape the sides of your bowl occasionally to make sure everything is getting mixed in before adding in more powdered sugar.

When all the powdered sugar has been added, add heavy whipping cream (or just regular milk would work) a tablespoon at a time until desired consistency is reached. I added about 4.5 tablespoons.

Repeat for the second batch of frosting.

When the frosting is complete, you may notice a slightly yellow tinge from the butter. To combat this, use a toothpick to add a small (small!) bit of purple gel food coloring. Whip to combine and this will help cancel that yellow color from the frosting.

If desired, you can add in some Wilton butter flavoring, but I skipped that step.

Keep the frosting covered with plastic wrap until ready to use as it will start to crust over as it sits.

You will need a flat surface to build this cake on. Unfortunately, all my cake serving pieces have a dip in the middle so I ended up using a cutting board. My cutting board is not very fancy and I didn't even get it centered. I would not recommend doing it this way really, but this was a cake for myself so I was ok with it. I had thought I could move the cake to a different serving piece later on but that didn't work. One of those cardboard cake pads would work great for this.

Put a small blob of frosting on the cake plate. Place the first layer of cake, top side down, onto the frosting. If desired, you can trim the tops off the cakes so you have a flatter surface, but these cakes weren't too domed so I just put them face side down to cool and they were pretty flat already.

Using an offset spatula, add a layer of frosting about 1/4 inch thick on top. Press the next layer of cake on top of that, then add more frosting and level it off again. Finally add the last layer of cake on top of that and gently press down to level off the cake.

Spread a very thin layer of frosting around the top and outside of the cake. This is a called a crumb coat because it will help catch all the crumbs which will help when decorating later.

Place the cake in the fridge to chill while you work on the origami templates.

To add the origami detail to the cake, we will make origami templates out of both paper and plastic template. If you'd rather just make them out of paper, you can do that. Use a nice sturdy cardstock, but not so thick that it's difficult to fold the paper.

To make the template, start by measuring the height of your cake and circumference of the cake. I used a piece of paper to measure around the outside of the cake. Take the circumference and divide that number by 4.

Cut out 5 rectangles that are as tall as your cake and as long as the circumference is divided by 4. You'll need one extra segment because the darts folded into the paper will take up some space and having an extra template will help cover the full area around the cake.

Once the paper is cut to size, fold the paper in half lengthwise. Open that fold then fold the two flaps into the middle. Unfold the paper again and lay flat.

Using a flat edge, I used a plastic bench scraper, align one edge of the edge with the bottom corner of the paper and align the other end with the top corner of the fold line. Bend the paper over and crease.

Next, rotate your flat edge so the top meets in the same point, but rotate the bottom to the bottom left of the next folded rectangle. Continue across the paper until you have made 4 fold lines resulting in triangles within the rectangles.

Take some time to make the lines meet up correctly and crease the paper well.

Next, I used cake collar plastic to repeat the template steps. Cake collar plastic is usually used on fancy desserts that have layers exposed but it also works well for these templates. It's not so flimsy that it won't hold the shape but I didn't think it could support the weight of the buttercream. Once the plastic templates are complete, I stacked them on top of the paper templates.

Now that the templates are ready, fill a plastic ziploc baggie (or piping bag) with frosting. Snip a tip off the plastic baggie and pipe the frosting into the folds following the templates. Once all the folds are filled, take more frosting and fill in the rest of the templates. This is a messy process. Make sure you get frosting all the way to the edges of the templates and make the top as flat as possible.

Now that the templates are ready, retrieve the cake from the fridge and add another thin layer of frosting around the outside of the cake. I figured this would help the frosting in the templates stick better to the cake. Take a segment of the template and slap it against the side of the cake. Take care to keep the template against the cake board so it is even across the top. Remove the paper part of the template and press the edges against the cake. Add on the next template making sure to get it as close to the edge of the last template but not overlapping. Pay attention to the direction of your templates and make sure they're all put on the same direction.

Once all the templates are stuck on the cake, I saw some lines from where the buttercream was piped into the templates. I found it easiest to get rid of those lines by gently rubbing the plastic which helped meld the frosting together. If I were to do this again, I would use a small knife to smooth out the piped in frosting so it covers the template surface first, then fill the rest of the template.

Once the templates are well attached and smoothed out, put the cake back in the fridge to set up for about a half hour.

Once the cake has had a chance to firm up some, take it back out of the fridge and finish filling in the top with more frosting. Take the frosting straight over to the edge with an offset spatula and smooth it right over the sides of the template. Scrape off excess frosting and make it as smooth as possible. Now is also the time to make sure your edges of your templates are as flat and crisp as possible. I used my plastic bench scraper to help manipulate the frosting so it was nice and flat.

Put the cake back in the fridge for about a half hour once again so the frosting can firm up.

Once the frosting has had a chance to firm up again, take the cake out of the fridge and gently peel off the template pieces. You may notice some spots where the cake is showing through or the frosting is imperfect. Take a little time and some extra frosting and fill in all those holes. This process is pretty similar to patching a hole in drywall!

Once all the sides are cleaned up, use a flat edge to clean up the edges of the cake. Scrape up any stray frosting and push the bottom edge of the frosting under the cake to give it a clean edge. I smoothed a clean tea towel over the top of the cake to help smooth out the surface too.

Now that the cake is all set, I moved on to make an origami topper with candy melts. I decided to make an origami butterfly design so I printed the design in a few different sizes and covered the pieces with parchment paper.

I added a few candy melts to a microwave safe bowl and microwaved in 30 second intervals. I stirred the candy with a rubber spatula between zaps in the microwave until it was all melted.

Add the candy to a plastic baggie and snip a small corner off the bag (or use a piping bag with a thin piping tip).

Follow the lines of the design with the candy. Move carefully as it can be very goopy. Use a toothpick to help smooth the lines out. If you want to add sprinkles to the topper, pipe out sections and add sprinkles. If you wait until you've piped the whole thing, the candy will firm up and the sprinkles won't stick.

I decided to add a second layer of candy on top once the first layer had hardened and add a shortened wooden skewer in the middle of the butterfly body. I covered the skewer with a little more candy and let it firm up in the fridge.

I also decided to cover a few strawberries with some of the leftover chocolate as well by drizzling the candy quickly overtop.

Park everything in the fridge to firm up.

When I was ready to decorate the cake, I took everything out of the fridge and every so gently removed the wax paper from the topper. I stuck the skewer into the cake and gently pressed the butterfly into the cake. I added the second butterfly by just pressing the edge of the butterfly into the cake then I added on the strawberries.

When it came time to cut the cake, I was worried it would be a lot of frosting on the edges. It is, but I thought there was enough cake to frosting to not be overwhelming.

Overall this was a really pretty and tasty cake and I was really proud of the end result!

I think if I were to make a similar cake again, I would do a smaller diameter cake (maybe 7 inches instead of 9?) and do one extra layer up so it's 4 layers tall. This would stretch out the triangles on the edges of the cake and make them a little skinnier which I think might look nice. I would also do the frosting in two batches, as mentioned, and maybe use a different frosting to fill the cake and add a layer of fruit inside would be nice too.