Recipe
How to Make (and Decorate) a Hydrangea Cake
Let me just start off by saying, I hate flowers. I threw out every bouquet of roses I received for dance recitals, I threw every corsage off my wrist right after prom pictures were taken, and my garden at my parents' house only consists of fruits and vegetables...except for one. There is seriously only one flower in my backyard, and that's a hydrangea. So a hydrangea cake was the perfect match for me.
Hydrangeas have always been my favorite flowers from when I was a kid, and I always look forward to coming home in the summertime to see them blossoming all around my house. I mean look at them!
So when my mom sent me this tutorial for mini hydrangea cakes, I knew I had to make them. But as usual, I had to put my own twist on the cake and the frosting. Below you'll find the recipe for a hibiscus lemon cake with an orange buttercream filling and frosting, and vanilla buttercream hydrangeas.
The cake is just a basic lemon cake with about 1/3 of a cup of hibiscus powder, or pulverized dried hibiscus flowers. I put whole dried hibiscus flowers in a spice grinder so my cake came out a dark purple. If you buy the powder it might come out more pink.
Hibiscus Lemon Cake
- Prep Time: 20 mins
- Cook Time: 27 mins
- Total Time: 47 mins
- Servings: 8
Ingredients
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 1 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 tbsp vanilla
- 1 1/3 cup flour
- 1/3 to 1/2 cup hibiscus powder
- 1.5 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- Juice and zest from 2 lemons
- 1 cup buttermilk
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Let the cakes sit on a wire cooling rack until they cool completely. If you don't, the frosting will melt and your cakes will slide.
Buttercream Frosting
- Prep Time: 10 mins
- Cook Time: 15 mins
- Total Time: 25 mins
- Servings: 1
Ingredients
- 3 sticks softened butter
- 3 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp vanilla
- 8 cups powdered sugar
- 2-3 tbsp milk
- Juice from half an orange
- Zest from a whole orange
- Cake dye your choice
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The Finished Product
#SpoonTip: Decorating this cake makes a really cool time lapse video:
This cake looks much more challenging than it actually is...I promise it isn't difficult! It's incredibly fun to make and allows you to add your own creative flair to it. I can't wait to make this again.