Jane's First Birthday Cake

For Jane's first birthday cake, I really wanted something that was large-crowd-friendly & of course, extremely delicious!

I chose to stick with a classic vanilla cake recipe with a vanilla bean frosting.

I researched a lot of recipes & decided upon Robyn Stone's recipe from Add a Pinch!

I feel like the recipe is so spot-on with respect to richness, moistness, and density. I feel like the combination of butter & vegetable shortening render that amazing depth in flavor. Also, the buttermilk is what sets this recipe apart from many regular vanilla cake recipes.

My advice would be to bake your cakes the week before the party, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and freeze until the day before (or whenever you're ready to frost). 

For the frosting, I ordered this amazing vanilla bean paste from Amazon.  Of course, you can substituent the vanilla bean paste with just pure vanilla extract, but it doesn't even compare in taste! You also wouldn't see those beautiful brown speckles of vanilla bean caviar in your frosting. 

I used RoseBake's recipe found here.

Happy Baking! xox

I should also note that I am the farthest thing away from being a professional cake decorator!  I pride myself on taste, not aesthetics ;)