gold leaf cake | Little Button Diaries

I recently attended a wedding of two very good friends of ours. Their DIY craft inspired celebration was beautiful. Instead of having one wedding cake, they asked willing guests to each make one, leading to a trestle table FULL of beautiful sweet treats. Deciding what to bake for the occasion was tricky…. I thought champagne and glitz are standard elements of a wedding so I made a champagne and gold leaf celebration cake.

To make the sponges you will need:

200g unsalted butter
200g caster sugar
200g plain flour
4 eggs
2 tbsp baking powder
A few drops of vanilla extract

To make the buttercream you will need:

350g unsalted butter
700g icing sugar
Champagne, or a good quality sparkling wine (6-10 teaspoons)

To decorate:

Sheets of edible gold leaf

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees. Begin by making your sponges. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl. Then add half the eggs and flour and mix. Add the vanilla, baking powder and remaining eggs and flour and combine well. Divide into two sandwich tins and bake for 30 minutes (insert a skewer into the mixture and if it comes out clean it will be ready to remove from the oven).

2. Whilst the cakes are cooling, make the buttercream, Beat the butter until it is light and fluffy. Add the icing sugar and beat until the mixture is combined. Add teaspoons of champagne, one at a time, until you have your desired strength of taste. Then, sandwich the sponges together with buttercream and spread a thin layer around the top and sides as a crumb coat. Place in the fridge to chill.

3. Add a second layer of buttercream and smooth it with a palette knife. Learning how to make cakes super smooth is definitely on my to do list. If anyone has any tips then please let me know!

4. I wanted to keep the decoration really simple for this cake, so I scored the word ‘love’ onto the top using a skewer.

5. The final glitzy touch to the cake is a sprinkling of gold leaf. This can be really fiddly to apply so use a cocktail stick to pick it up and place it into the centre of the heart. When you peel the gold leaf off the sheet, it will shrivel up, so only take it out when you’re ready to place it on the cake.