How To Make A Half And Half Cake

Hi, I'm Emily of British Girl Bakes and I'm going to show you how to assemble and frost a half and half cake like this one

And I'm also going to show you how I decorated this one with painted macarons and fruit and sugar art

I'm going to build a four layer cake. So I'm starting with four layers of cake and I have two vanilla and two chocolate

And I also have two different flavours of buttercream and these ones are berry and caramel

Before we start, I'm just going to give you a really quick explanation with a diet

of how we're going to do this. So with the two chocolate layers I'm going to trim them in half and then stack them all on top of each other to form half of the cake. And then with the vanilla layers, I'm going to do exactly the same. So cutting each one in half, stacking them all up, building half a cake, and then pushing it together with the chocolate half so that you have a whole cake. Of course, there's also going to be filling between all of the layers and also between the two halves right down the middle. And that's going to join the two halves of the cake together to make a full cake and then I'll cover it in front

and decorations. Okay, let's get started. So as I mentioned I have two different

flavors of buttercream. Here's the caramel and the berry and then I've also put

vanilla butter cream in a third piping bag. You don't have to use piping bags for this

it's just a bit neater. And the reason I've chosen vanilla is because I need a neutral

flavor to go down the center of the cake to attach the two halves and between berry

and caramel I thought vanilla was just the safest most neutral option. I have my

cake layers ready. I've leveled and divided these ones. and now I'm applying the filling by piping it on

And after sandwiching my first two layers together, I'm cutting them in half down the middle

and then applying another layer of filling onto one of them, flipping the other one over

and then I have half of a cake ready to go. If you're enjoying this tutorial, please click the thumbs up button

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so if you don't want to miss one, please click the subscribe button. I'm doing exactly the same with my chocolate layers

layers, piping on the filling, sandwiching them together, cutting them down the middle

applying a bit more frosting, and then stacking one half on top of the other half to create

the other half of my cake. Now these layers were all about the same height, but I can see once

I've stacked them all together that my chocolate half is a lot taller than my vanilla half

And to fix this, I'm just going to flip the chocolate layer down on its side and trim off a little

bit from the top and a little bit from the bottom so that both halves of the cake will be the

same height. And you can do this the way I did, or you can line the cakes up side by side

and then you get a better view of how much you need to cut off. I'm going to chill these Sunny

the fridge for about 30 minutes just so that they firm up and they a bit more stable for when I come to build the cake I piping two dollops of buttercream onto a cakeboard one to attach each half of the cake

And now I'm flipping one half of the cake on its back, so that I can spread some filling into the middle

and that's going to attach the two halves like glue. This is why it's really important to chill the cake halves first, so that they're stable enough to do this

I'm pressing my first half of cake onto the cake board, and then pressing the second half on, pushing it against the frosted side of the other cake

so that they stick together. Now I'm wrapping it in cling film and I'm going to chill it for a little bit longer before I frost it

just so that the cakes firm up a bit more and they aren't too crumbly. Now for frosting the cake, you could frost it as you would normally do and it will be a

surprise when you cut into it whether you get chocolate cake or vanilla cake or whatever flavors you've chosen or you can divide the frosting so that each

half of the cake looks distinct. I'm starting with a crumb coat which is just a

really thin layer of frosting to cover the whole cake and that traps any crumbs

that come off the cake and they don't get into the final layer of frosting. If you

wanted to you could use the same flavor for the whole cake, maybe the neutral flavor that you used in the middle of the two halves or you can divide the crumb coat

into two halves to match the flavours of the cake. The way that you apply and smooth the

frosting on a half and half cake is almost exactly the same as you would for a normal cake. The

only difference is that you're stopping halfway round. So when you smooth it, you should start

with your frosting scraper at one edge of the half and smooth kind of towards the middle

and then go from the other side towards the middle, so that you're creating two very finite

ends to the frosting. Don't worry if the end is a little bit messy. You can just stick

your frosting scraper into it with a bit of pressure and then sort of swipe off away from

that half of the frosting and that will take off the uneven edge and leave a nice smooth line

You can also divide the flavors of the frosting on the top of the cake, but just for ease

I've done the same flavor for both halves of this cake. It's best to chill the first half before you continue with the second half so that if you

get any of the second flavor over the top of the first flavor, it's really easy to wipe it off

because the first flavor is chilled, and so it holds its shape. Now, for my second half of the cake, I'm actually not going to do a crumb coat

and the reason is because it's vanilla cake, and it's really not crumbly, and from experience I know that I'm not going to get any crumbs in the frosting

So I'm starting with the top half, and I'm just going to spread the berry buttercream onto one half of the cake

spreading it all the way up to the middle, and then using my offset spatula to tidy it up

and this is an example of why it's important to chill the first flavour. It really easy for me to wipe off any berry frosting that sneaks over onto the other half of the cake because that first flavour is chilled and it set and it won get damaged by me wiping the berry buttercream off the top using my offset spatula

I'm spreading the berry buttercream all around the sides of the cake, just covering up this one half

trying to get the same thickness all around the cake, and then I'm smoothing it out with my frosting scraper

always smoothing from one edge of the berry butter cream into the middle, and then back from the other edge into the middle

And that creates a fairly neat division between the two flavors of frosting, but I can tidy it up by pushing my frosting scraper into the frosting

where I want the join between berry and caramel to be, and then swiping away, and that leaves a really neat division

While the frosting is still sticky, I'm going to give it a bit of texture, and you can do this with either an offset spatula spatula or a spoon

And all I'm doing is swiping from the very bottom of the cake up to the very very

top and it's creating these really rustic looking vertical grooves in the frosting which

create little peaks at the top of the cake. I actually want the top of the cake to be smooth so I'm using my offset spatula just to

gently scrape any overhanging frosting from the sides of the cake over onto the top of the

cake. I'm chilling this half of the cake so that the frosting sets and after about 15 minutes

I'm ready to do the other half. I'm spreading my caramel buttercream onto the top of the

the cake and where it goes over onto the berry buttercream it's really easy just to scrape

it off with my offset spatula. If you preferred, you could press some parchment paper over

onto the first flavour of buttercream, so the berry in this case. And then when you spread

the second frosting, the caramel buttercream for me, you wouldn't get any over on the

berry side of the cake. Now I'm just spreading the caramel onto the sides of the cake and

then smoothing it the same way that I did for the berry frosting. And I'm going to

to apply the same texture to this half of the cake and I'll show you how I do it with an

offset spatula this time instead of the back of a spoon. So I'm just holding the

spatula against the very bottom of the cake and swishing it upwards, applying a little

bit of pressure but not too much pressure and that leaves these nice grooves in the

frosting. I'm tidying up the top by wiping any of the overhanging frosting over

onto the top of the cake and I'm really happy with how the frosting looks. To create

for the top of the cake. I'm starting with some sugar art and I've just boiled some sugar and water together for this

And I'm pouring this onto a silicon mat and I've tried to give the mat a bit of movement by draping it over a bowl

And I spooning out the cooked sugar and drizzling it where I want it to go in a few different patterns and then leaving it to set I go into sugar art in a lot more detail in my online course on 10 cake decorating techniques and you can sign up by clicking the link in the screen or I put the link

in the description below. I'm going to paint some macarons gold for the caramel side

of the cake so I'm mixing some gold luster dust with just a drop of vodka to make an edible

paint and now I'm just using a paint brush to brush it onto a macaron trying to get

into the sides and all of the grooves to make it completely gold. For the berry side of the cake, I've got some berry macarons, and I'm decorating these with some edible gold leaf

And gold leaf is tricky because it sticks to anything vaguely moist, like your fingers, so I'm using the back of a paintbrush to apply it to this

You could also use the other end of the paintbrush. And I'm doing a few of these before moving on to some fruit

I've washed my berries, and now I'm letting them dry, and I'm going to use all of these fruit whole, except for the strawberries I'm going to just cut off the fruit

to just cut off the tops so that they have a flat surface to stick onto the cake

Since the frosting on my cake has already set, it's not sticky anymore, so to attach

the fruit I'm piping a few tiny rosettes of buttercream and they'll act as a glue for

the fruit. I'm arranging the fruit and then sticking in a few macarons and then I'm going to paint

some of the fruit with the same edible gold paint that I made to paint the macarons

For the caramel side of the cake, I'm piping these little wiggles, which I'm doing with a 1M tip, and as I squeeze the buttercream out of the bag, I'm just wiggling it back and forth, and that's creating these nice ruffles

And these are going to support the sugar art decorations that I made earlier

Piping a few more wiggles to support my macarons and give them some height

And then I'm brushing on a little bit more of the gold leaf onto the side of the cake

And there it is, my half and half cake. I love this design because it's so flexible

You could use obviously any flavors you wanted, so many different decorations

and there are so many different fun textures that you could apply, or you could even create a double themed cake if you wanted to

wanted to, the possibilities really are endless. If you're interested in learning the basics

like how to level and divide the cake layers, how to prepare buttercream frosting, how to store it

how to transport a cake and serve it, you might be interested in my online course on the basics

of cake, and I've put the link in the screen and in the description below. Thanks for watching

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