Pink Champagne Cake

I've been looking for champagne cake recipe for a while, and I kept coming across ones that where made with box cake mix or just sounded so so. My plan was to make a Pink Champagne Cake for New Years Eve, I totally think you should you should ring in the New Year with a slice of champagne cake and glass of blubby toasting to the good life and promising of the year ahead! Life is about celebrating the moments and Pink Champagne Cake is a perfect celebratory cake. 

I found a fantastic recipe on a Half-BakedBaker  her recipe is from the cake book Brooze Hounds. I recently shared the Pink Champagne Cake on Instagram and wanted to share the the actual recipe here. This cake is super easy and fun to make, while your making your cake, I can guarantee you'll be smelling the cake batter and saying yummy!

The cake turned out amazing and super moist! The cake is such a pretty pale blush pink and the frosting a pretty ballerina pink. My husband isn't huge on frosting, so I decided to only frost the middle layer and top of my cake and used only half of the recipe for the frosting. The frosting is super yummy and once set has this pretty glaze look, that reminds me of glazed surgery doughnut. 


Pink Champagne Cake

3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature 
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
6 egg whites
2 cups pink Champagne at room temperature

2-3 drops of red gel food coloring 

For the Champagne / Sparkling Wine, I used a sweet one. I used a inexpensive bottle of Pink Blush from Andre and would totally do that again! Martini & Ross Asti is also a good choice for this cake. 


Pink Champagne Vanilla Frosting

1 cup  unsalted butter
8 cups confectioners sugar
2 -3 Tablespoons pink Champagne
1/4 cup whole milk, or enough to get the proper consistency
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
1-2 drops of red gel food coloring. I thought one drop was perfect to create a pretty ballerina pink shade. 


Baking the Cake

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees and grease two 9 inch round cake pans, you can also slightly dust the inside with flour for ease of removing the cake from the pan. In a large mixing bowl add flour, baking powder and salt, then set aside. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar 5 minutes together for or until light and fluffy. Add your egg whites in one at a time. Next mix in your vanilla. Start adding in your flour mixture, then champagne and alternate between the two. Make sure you start with flour and end with flour. Next scrape the sides of the bowl done and then add in your food coloring. I used 2-3 drops of coloring for my cake batter. 


Next, evenly pour batter into pans and bake 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick when inserted in the center comes out clean. Let your cake cool on a rack before removing from pan. The cake should remove very easliy from the cake pan, if not try these suggestions from Better Homes and Gardens, How to Remove a Cake from a Pan.

Making the Frosting

In a mixing bowl, beat butter 1 minute. Gradually add the confectioners' sugar, Champagne, milk, vanilla, and 1 drop of food coloring; beat until smooth and spreadable. Make sure you fully mix in the food coloring into the frostingThis frosting is super pretty and has a sheen like appearance thank looks even prettier in a shade of pink. As I mentioned above, I halved the frosting recipe and only put frosting in the middle and on top, the cake is sweet enough, rich that you don't miss the frosting on the sides. 



Lastly cut your cake and enjoy! I'm making this cake tonight to celebrate the New Year with our friends and can't wait to make it again!! This time, I won't be so impatient and I'll cool the cake layers in the fridge before frosting! If you make this cake, I'd love to hear your thoughts , enjoy! 

Decking Our Halls in Chartreuse and Gold

I planned on sharing this post this morning, sadly due to connectivity issues with our internet I wasn't able to. Rejoice, my internet is working again! I'ts hard to believe that Christmas is just right around the corner and I couldn't be more thrilled. Last year we Decked Our Halls in Color, this year I took a nod from our interior and thoughts shades or chartreuse mixed with gold would be so pretty. I shared our Christmas tree a few weeks ago, I'm so thrilled this year we went with a pretty flocked tree from Treetopia. In other fun news, I was in the LA Times last Thursday! They asked my opinions on Real vs. Artificial Christmas trees, you can read th article here (in the paper edition, they shared a picture of my son Tabari decorating our tree) When you have a chance stop by the Treetopia blog, I'm sharing my tips on decorating for the Holidays. I love evenings in our home during Christmastime and decided to take pictures of our home then. 

I kept our Christmas decorations pretty simple, filing a ceramic bowl with lots of ornaments and gold garland, During the holidays, can't get enough of tinsel garland! Our chartreuse and green ornaments are from Big Lots! I bought almost all the gold ornaments from Target [make sure you use your cartwheel app to score extra deals while shopping there]





I'm in love with our butterfly artwork above the sofa and wanted to add some merry mint to it, so I decided to make an ornament garland. I used gold ribbon to strung the each ornament though the top to create the garland. I used a mixture of gold, matte, glitter and shiny ornaments to create the garland. 










Our Christmas tree all lit up, I'm just in love with it and can't say that enough! I bought pre-lit garland from Lowes its the super nice and 'real' kind and placed it on our campaign dresser to give it extra sparkle.



This pretty picture with our Christmas tree all aglow in the bakcground just slays me!! So much pretty. 



I hope everyone's having a fun filled holiday season! I still have some last minute Christmas shopping to do this week, thankfully with help from the internet I'll get it all done! Stop by Thursday, I'll be sharing back to back last minute Holiday gift guides for Her / Him and Kids! 

Quick reminder, there's only a few days left to Enter the Color♥Hug giveaway, please click here to enter!