Pastel Christmas Cake Tutorial
This sweet Pastel Christmas Tree Cake Tutorial is a new favorite of ours, with its shades of pink and green.
We'll show you how to create a striped buttercream cake, a pink drip, and whimsical and fun chocolate candy coating trees in this free video tutorial!
Table of Contents
Cake Materials:
This cake design would be beautiful on cakes of any size.
We made a double barrel cake using four 6 inch cake layers, a cake board cut down to the size of the cake on the bottom, a cake board cut slightly smaller than the cake for the middle, and four bubble tea straws for support beneath the middle cake board (cut to the height of the first two filled cake layers). If you'd like to see a double barrel cake being constructed, our recent Hanging Ornaments Cake Video is a good example.
- Our Classic Vanilla Buttercream or Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream recipes or your butter-based frosting of choice . (Fluffy is a bit whiter because it contains some shortening, while the all-butter Classic Vanilla recipe firms up more quickly in the freezer, which is helpful when making the striped buttercream.)
- Coloring- We used Americolor Green and Pink candy colorings to tint our chocolate as well as the green buttercream.
- Sprinkles of Choice- Our Pink, Green, and White sprinkles are Wilton. We also used silver dragees. We also used white/clear sanding sugar on top of the "snow".
- Cake Comb- I prefer metal because I can heat it in hot water more easily before smoothing over the buttercream for a smooth finish, but it doesn't have to be. I'm using a comb by Evil Cake Genius.
- Disposable Piping Bags
- Piping Tips- I used a tip 12 for piping on the stripes but you could also just snip the tip away from your piping bag to the desired size.
- Miscellaneous: Wax or Parchment Paper, cookie sheet, turntable (helpful, optional)
- Lollipop Sticks
Cake Notes
Whenever working with candy coating decorations like our chocolate Christmas trees, chill them again just before handling/placing onto cake to firm them up. Also, always make a few extra in case of breakage!
For the Ganache Drip
For our Ganache, we used a 3:1 ratio of white chocolate to heavy cream. For convenience and because we were just doing a simple drip, we used white chocolate chips & used a microwave. We did 6 oz of white chocolate to 2 oz heavy cream-- we still had some leftover and so adjust to your liking.
Heating the Chocolate
We heated the chips and cream first for 30 seconds. Let it sit for two minutes to melt further (we stirred gently), then reheat for 10 more seconds. This was all that we needed but if you need more time, heat in small increments.
Tinting the Chocolate
When we tinted the white chocolate ganache with the pink candy coloring, it didn't match the trees because the ganache had a deeper yellow tint. This resulted in a peachy hue. To correct, I stirred in some white coloring gel (ours was Wilton).
*Test a small amount first before using regular coloring gels with your ganache to make sure it doesn't cause seizing or thickening. We had no problems and were happy with the color!
*I don't recommend adding regular coloring gel for tinting straight candy coating or chocolate...but our ganache was more forgiving.
Winter Cake Recipes!
There are so many winter cake recipes that would be perfect with this Christmas Tree cake design. A few of our favorites are our Peppermint Cake, Eggnog Cake, Gingerbread Cake, and Red Velvet Cake!
More Christmas and Winter Cakes!
We've made so many Christmas and winter cake tutorials over the years. I'll link to a few below, but make sure to check out our Roundup of Christmas Cake Designs as well as our Roundup of Christmas Cake Recipes for even more ideas!
Just a few of our favorites are our Christmas Tree Cake in Chocolate, Loopy Christmas Bow Cake, Sweet Santa Cake , and Hanging Ornaments Cake!
Enjoy the Video
Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope that you enjoy this sweet pastel Christmas Cake tutorial! If you give this cake design (or your own variation) a try, we would love for you to leave a comment and photo below!
Beautiful! I love it! :-) Matches my Christmas colours :-)
Thank you!! xoxo
This cake is so pretty!! I just love the color of the Christmas trees!! Merry Christmas everyone. :-)
So pretty! ??
I hurt myself last year thought I couldn't do baking any longer so got rid of a lot of my cake supplies, so sorry I did that, watching you with the wonderful cakes you make , makes me sad to think of the items I gave to the Goodwill. Oh well someone is very happy. Still have enough to make some lovely cakes, best for friends they never say how not so good of a decorator just happy to get a good tasting cake.. Always will watch you and your beautiful cakes you make Always inspires me to do better. Thank you and your mother LOVE MY CAKE SCHOOL.
Gorgeous!
Hi Melissa! I was thinking of pairing this with the white chocolate raspberry cake recipe for Christmas this year. Will the white chocolate buttercream work for the stripes?? I've never done stripes before, so I'm just making sure. ;)
Hi Fiona- I don't see why not! Have fun, would love to see your finished cake! ;0)
How runny should the chocolate be for the trees and the ganache? Did you use melted white chocolate or candy coating?
Hi Fiona, I used candy coating for the trees (we use the white bark coating from the grocery store most often- Candiquik is one example).
For the drip, we used white chocolate ganache (a 3:1 ratio of white chocolate to cream by weight).
When working with either the ganache or the candy coating, the chocolate is not extremely runny, just fluid enough that it flows easily from the piping bag. The chocolate will thicken as it sits and cools and so if it is too runny, just give it a few more minutes.
With a ganache drip, you can test the ganache by piping on the inside of a bowl to see how far the drips travel down, how thick, etc. A lot of this is just personal preference. I apply my drips to chilled cakes and so the drips slow down fairly quickly.
The chocolate will not be hot to the touch when you are making either the drip or the chocolate trees. I hope this helps!
Thank you so much! I'll try to post a picture of the cake when it's done. Merry Christmas!
I'm not an expert, but I think it turned out pretty good! I hope it tastes good as well! :)