For a daughter's second birthday, a parent set out to make a Swedish Princess Cake but changed plans after the toddler became fixated on Elmo. The result was a confetti cake—white cake speckled with rainbow sprinkles—that could be shaped into a sheet cake and decorated with a piped Elmo. The parent, writing on the Smitten Kitchen blog, described tweaking a white cake recipe to avoid the dryness typical of white cakes by reducing flour and baking powder and increasing butter.
The recipe makes one 8x8 or 9-inch round cake or, when tripled, two 9x13-inch sheet cake layers. It uses butter, sugar, egg whites, vanilla, buttermilk, baking powder, cornstarch, flour, and sprinkles. The frosting is a simple buttercream of butter, powdered sugar, salt, vanilla, and milk or cream.
For the Elmo decoration, the parent copied Muppet images from the web, cut them into stencils, and traced outlines onto the chilled frosted cake with a toothpick. Tiny amounts of tinted frosting were piped on using a Wilton #5 round tip for most parts and a #2 tip for details like mouth corners and eyeballs. The parent noted that a #4 tip would also work.
The cake serves 16 small squares or 12 wedge-shaped slices and takes about an hour to make. The parent also mentioned a forthcoming cookbook, Party Cake Heaven, due in the fall.
Editorial Notes