Caramel Maple Mud Letter Cake With Fudgy Vanilla Buttercream

I made a letter cake recently and am so pleased with the result.  I had been wanting to try a new mud cake recipe and this was the perfect excuse.  You could replicate this method with any type of cake that you prefer.  A mud cake is a great cake to start with because it is easy to cut into shapes and layer.

THE CAKE 

The recipe I made was Donna Hay's Caramel Maple Mud Cake recipe.  You can see Donna's recipe here.  The recipe is not a large cake recipe and makes enough to make 8 large cupcakes.  If you were making a large letter or want thick layers of cake I would double the cake recipe.  I made a single batch and cooked the cake in a very large rectangle cake tin.  Line your cake tin with baking/parchment paper.  You need to make sure that your cake tin is large enough to fit the shape of the cake you are making and you may need multiple cakes if you wish to have more than one layer.  I cooked mine for 25 minutes as the cake batter was quite thin.

After the cake is cooked you need to cool it completely and chill it in the refrigerator for at least an hour.  I chilled my cake overnight.  Chilling the cake makes it easy to cut and move. 

I indulged myself and chose to make a letter L for Lisa (why not hey) and because of the simple shape of a letter L I was able to cut two letter L's from the one rectangle cake.  I used our print-at-home letter L template.  Our letter templates are available here.

Carefully cut around your letter template using a sharp knife.  I cut two letter L shapes out of my one rectangle cake.  For larger numbers you will need to make 2 cakes unless you have a REALLY large cake pan and oven.  

BUTTERCREAM FROSTING

I combined Donna Hay's recipe for the caramel fudge frosting with my vanilla buttercream frosting to make a beautifully sweet and decadent buttercream frosting.

STEP 1

STEP 2

Make my vanilla buttercream recipe.  With your mixer on low speed, slowly incorporate the caramel fudge frosting until fully incorporated and the frosting is smooth and glossy.  The buttercream will get quite soft at this stage so you may wish to refrigerate it to firm it up before piping it.

STEP 3

Pipe your buttercream onto your first layer of cake.  Place in the refrigerator to chill the buttercream for 15 minutes.  Add second layer of cake and pipe with buttercream, coloured with your choice of colours, and using different icing nozzles to give different effects if you wish.  At this stage you can add decorations to your letter cake like mini meringues, lollies, sprinkles, macarons etc.  For my letter L I just decorated with buttercream.

Happy baking!

Lisa xo