23 Dec Homemade Stencil Christmas Tree Glitter Cake

I realized a couple weeks ago that I talk a lot about my love of disco dust but follow through very little on it with the recipes I post here. As I looked through my archives, it became clear that there are almost no recipes with my favorite sparkly decor! It seems that disco dust makes it onto the top of most of the cake balls and cupcakes that I make for non-blog reasons, but never seems to make it to Butterlust. My early 2014 resolution is to change that!

I’ve been wanting to try out homemade stencils with disco dust for some time now, so I figured this was the perfect opportunity. After all, glitter pretty much screams Christmas.

First things first about this cake, yes I realize it’s lopsided. I obviously need to practice my cake trimming skills. Or maybe I need to subtract wine from the equation. I swear, after 2 glasses that right side looked perfectly straight!

But this post isn’t really about the cake. It’s actually just a box mix cake. Made exactly to the instructions on the box. No doctoring, nada.

Instead of cake, today we’re talking about homemade stencils and glitter. Once you’ve got the stencil part down, you can bedazzle and dang kind of cake you please. Round cakes, square cakes, mini cakes, layer cakes, all the cakes! Well, maybe not bundt cakes. But you get my drift.

All you need to make a homemade stencil is poster board, a pencil, scissors and an Exacto knife.

Full disclosure, my original plan was to make a stencil with words. Something like “Joyful” or “Let it Snow” in beautiful, curly cursive. But be warned, unless you are a heart surgeon/sculptor/have-an-unusually-steady-hand, cutting words out of poster board is hard. Exacto knives seem to have a mind of their own. I learned my lesson pretty quickly – stick to simple shapes.

Thus, out with the words and in with the Christmas trees. Of course you could make any holiday shape you prefer.

Here’s how you make your stencil glitter cake:

Trace the cake pan you are using onto your poster board.

Use scissors along the line you just traced so you have a pan shaped piece of poster board.

Use your pencil to sketch your desired shape, erasing as needed (if you’re me, it takes a few tries).

Once you are happy with your Christmas tree/snowman/candy cane/whatever-you-choose use the Exacto knife to carefully cut the shape out.

Hooray! You have a homemade stencil!

Next bake your cake. While your cake is baking make a batch of buttercream, recipe below. I used a shortening based buttercream for this because shortening helps the icing to form a nice crust, which will keep your stencil from making indentations in the cake. I did include some butter for flavor because (in my opinion) all shortening buttercream is no bueno. Shortening definitely has it’s place in baking, but butter is king.

Once your cake is baked, let it cool. If you’d like, go ahead and trim your cake to (attempt) to level any uneven surfaces. If you’re going to do this, put your cake in the refrigerator for a few hours. It makes it much easier.

When your cake is ready, apply a crumb coat and refrigerate until the icing is firm. Next, apply a generous layer of icing, keeping the top of your cake as flat as possible. Refrigerate again until the icing has formed a crust.

Here’s the fun part!

Position your stencil on the top of your cake and make sure there are no rogue edges sticking up that your glitter can sneak underneath. Use your fingers to sprinkle the disco dust of your choice over the stencil. I combined silver, gold, and multicolor clear to get my effect.

Once you have a generous dusting of glitter, carefully lift the stencil. You’ve got yourself a beautiful stenciled glitter cake! Easy as pie!

I’m going to try to get another post up tomorrow, but if I don’t HAVE A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

XoXo, Katie

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