Christmas Cake Wreath

This wreath Christmas cake is the perfect centerpiece during the holiday season. This simple and easy recipe uses my butter-based vanilla bean cake along with French buttercream and stiff buttercream for piping the wreath.

Can you believe this year is come to an end? Soon, it will be Christmas. Honestly, I am happy. It has been an extremely difficult year for so many people. I am looking forward to Christmas, although we won't have many family visits. The Christmas decorations and the kids' excitement over Santa kinda help keep the mood positive.

About this cake

This is a butter-based cake with white sugar and sour cream. It has a nice rich, butter flavor. And, the sour cream gives this cake a lovely soft tender crumb. In addition, the process of this cake is very simple and easy. I use the traditional method of creaming butter and sugar, followed by eggs and the rest of the ingredients.

You can also use other cake recipes for this wreath. For example, try my vanilla bean cake, vanilla cream cake, or vanilla birthday cake. See over 50 cake recipes here.

For the sake of simplicity, below, I have given you my vanilla buttercream frosting recipe. In the video, the white buttercream is my vanilla buttercream and the rest is my French buttercream frosting. And, you can also try eggnog buttercream, Swiss or Italian meringue. In fact, the options for frosting are endless, see all my over 30 buttercream frosting recipes.

For the piping - you want to make sure you use a stiff consistency buttercream for the holly leaves and berries. So, while the options for frosting are plenty, just make sure to use less liquid in your frosting to keep it more stable for piping.

The timeline for the cake

• Prepare cake batter - 10 minutes
• Bake cake - 35 minutes
• Chill cake - 4 hours at least (preferably overnight)
• Prepare frosting - 15 minutes
• Crumb coat cake - 15 minutes
• Chill cake - 15 minutes
• Second coat - 15 minutes
• Piping - 20 to 30 minutes

Ingredients and substitutes

• All-Purpose flour - Regular all-purpose flour works great. No need to look for anything else. And, if you have only self-raising flour, use it but reduce the baking powder by half. 
• Unsalted Butter - I always use unsalted so I can control the amount of salt. But, if salted butter is all you have, use it and omit salt in the recipe. 
• Sugar - I have used white sugar today but this works just as well with brown sugar. However, the color of the cake is a bit darker with brown sugar.
• Vanilla extract - A good quality vanilla extract goes a long way in enhancing the flavor of your baked goods.
• Eggs - Use fresh large eggs. Large eggs are about 60 grams each.
• Sour cream - Gives the cake that nice soft tender crumb. Yogurt is a great substitute for sour cream. But, you can also make your own sour cream at home.

Video and step by step instructions (pin)

Cake

• Preheat the oven to 170 C/ 340 F.
• Grease and flour 2 x 7-inch donut pans or one 9-cup bundt pan.
  Tip - I used one silicon donut pan. This dough can be left out and baked one at a time.
• In a bowl, combine flour with baking powder, baking soda, chai spice mix, and salt - and set aside.
• In the bowl of a stand mixer, with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy.
• Then, add the eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla extract.
• Next, add the flour mixture and buttermilk in three additions.
• Divide batter equally between the prepared baking pans.
• Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center comes clean.
• Then, cool in the baking pan for 5 minutes. Invert and cool on a wire rack completely before you decorate.

Buttercream

• In a bowl of a stand mixer, with the paddle attachment, cream the butter until smooth.
• Next, add salt, fresh cream, and vanilla – mix a minute longer, until well combined.
• Then, add the powdered sugar, one cup at a time.
• Once all the powder sugar has been incorporated, set aside until ready to use.
• Continue to mix on medium-high for 2 minutes more until you have a light and fluffy buttercream. But, since we need to pipe this buttercream do not over-whip or you will have too many air pockets when piping.

Assemble

• Prepare simple syrup - cool completely before using.
  Tip - Simple syrup is just sugar water that has been boiled and cooled. Used to keep cake layers moist.
• Next, using a bread knife or cake leveler, cut the domes off the cake layers.
• Then, brush each layer with the cooled simple syrup.
• Place a cake layer on the cake board or cake stand.
• Top with a big dollop of buttercream - spread evenly using a straight-edge spatula.
• Then, top the second cake layer. Place the cake in the fridge to chill for 10 to 15 minutes.
  Tip - Chilling the cake at this point will ensure the layers don't move when you frost the outside. However, if you leave the cake uncovered in the fridge for too long it can dry out. So, 10 minutes is all you need.
• Spread the remaining buttercream around and on top of the cake.
  Tip - A straight-edge spatula for the top, an off-set spatula, and soft acrylic smother for the sides work better.

Pipe

• Dye the remaining buttercream - make about 1 cup a cherry red color and the remaining a garden green color.
• Next, place the green buttercream in a piping bag with a leaf piping tip and the red in a piping bag with a small round tip no.3 or 4.
• Then, pipe three holly leaves and berries as shown in the video. The piping is very easy and you do not need any special skills. But, you do need patience because it is lots of leave and lots of berries.
  Tip - I covered the whole cake with holly leaves and berries but you can certainly do just the top half.
• Enjoy.

Frequently asked questions

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