Strawberry Chiffon Ribbon Cake

Because every girl should have a pretty pink cake on her special day.

Happy 30th birthday, Chau!

To celebrate a milestone birthday for a super great friend, we decided to throw a fancy picnic at Lacy Park, complete with a dessert table, burlap table clothes and Moroccan-style table runners and home-made pillows. There was even a super cute picture spot with a bench in front of a large tree, with hanging Moroccan lanterns, flowers, ribbons and banners, courtesy of the girls from Lumiani Events. I was in charge of the cake and cake pops and at the request of the birthday girl, made my Strawberry Chiffon Cake.



This cake is the most troublesome to decorate because the frosting is a whipped heavy cream sweetened with powdered sugar. It makes the cake super yummy and moist, without the overwhelming fat from traditional buttercreams. However, whipping cream doesn't exactly do well in 100 degree weather and there isn't much you can do with it in terms of decoration. For this special birthday cake, I decided to do the layers with whipped cream but used Martha Stewart's Italian Meringue Buttercream with pink coloring to decorate the outside of the cake.



I first saw this ribbon-piping design on My Sweet Saucy - it's super simple and just requires some good hand-eye coordination. I won't even try to explain how to do it. Just watch her video and you will be piping these ruffles in no time.



Here is a shot of the dessert table at the picnic. The cake lasted a good 2-3 hours in the 100 degree weather before the buttercream broke and started to melt/fall off the cake. So don't try to leave it out longer than that.

Sidenote: I love my new vintage cake stand! The grooves on the sides makes it super simple to change out the ribbon for whatever color you want. I think this officially kicks off my next obsession - cake stands.