How to Make a Leopard Print Cake

Let’s do a little bit of old school cake decorating shall we?

Taking my best recipe for Bakery Yellow Cake once again and adding some Leopard Prints to the batter!

But not only is the cake inside Leopard Prints but the buttercream shag decor too!

Making a Leopard Print Cake is really easy when you have the right recipes

A thicker cake batter is needed to achieve this really cool look, which is why this yellow cake recipe is perfect!

Keeping it really simple with light chocolate buttercream filling in different shades

For the Shag decor with more leopard prints all over!

Be sure to watch the YouTube video tutorial for how to make this unique design

Since I can’t really explain it in words, you really need the visual on this one!

I am using Ateco Tip #234 for the grass shag design

Notes for Success:

I’ve used my American Style Buttercream with no added shortening and it was still super stable!

I have several recipes for buttercream to choose from, but I would recommend the ABC for stability to pipe this shag decor. If you use another buttercream recipe be sure to add the shortening so the grass tip is pronounced and doesn’t flop

Earlier I mentioned that the cake batter should be a thicker recipe to be able to hold the design in place during baking; if your cake recipe is too thin it will lose the design

A 1½ time recipe for hte yellow cake was needed to be able to have sufficient batter to secretly nestle this design in the center

I still used 7″ X 2″ cake pans as I always do for my layer cakes, but if you only have 8″ pans I would recommend to only make a 2 layer cake

Since as you can see in the picture the leopard design was almost peaking through even with the hefty amount of batter that I used!

For more really easy and fun beginner designs click the links below!

Pineapple Crush Cake

Cherry Chip Cake

How to Make a Vegan Birthday Cake

How to Make a Leopard Print Cake

 

Print

Prep time

25 mins

Bake time

40 mins

Total time

1 hour 5 mins

 

Because this is a greater amount of batter in my 7" pans than I normally use~ the bake time is longer~ almost 40 minutes. Be sure to do the toothpick test to determine done-ness

Serves: 3-7" layers

Ingredients

• Soy Milk 2½cups (600ml) *soy milk is the only plant milk that will thicken like buttermilk, but you can use whatever plant milk you prefer
• White Vinegar 2 Tablespoons
• Vegan Butter 1 cup (113g) * see notes above in text article
• Vegetable oil of your choice 1 cup (117ml) *or more vegan butter melted
• Granulated Sugar 2¼ cup (450g)
• Salt 1 teaspoon
• Vanilla Extract 3 teaspoons (15ml)
• All Purpose Flour 4¼ cups (560g)
• Baking Soda 3 teaspoons (12g)
• For the design you will need Cocoa Powder 3 Tablespoons + 4 Tablespoons hot water
• 2X Recipe American Style Buttercream * I did not use the shortening addition but you may!
• For the Chocolate Buttercream shag decor you will again need 3 Tablespoons more cocoa powder + 4 tablespoons hot water to make the paste

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F
2. Grease & parchment line your cake pans
3. For the cake batter, first combine the vegetable oil with the melted vegan butter add the vanilla extract and set aside
4. Combine the soy milk with the vinegar and let stand for 5 minutes to thicken.
5. Sift all the dry ingredients including the sugar together in a large mixing bowl
6. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients in the bowl and whisk smooth, this will be the plant milk mixture and the butter/oil mixture
7. Next take out 1¼ cups of the batter and add the cocoa powder mixed with hot water to form a paste
8. Once the paste is cool whisk it into the batter to make the chocolate batter
9. Now take out an additional ¼ cup of vanilla batter and set that aside in another small bowl~ this will be for the lighter color chocolate batter
10. Now with half of the remaining vanilla cake batter & divide it evenly amongst your 3-7" cake pans that are greased and parchment lined
11. With the chocolate batter pipe the design as shown in the video tutorial in all 3 pans, you should have more chocolate batter left~ you will use this soon
12. Now with the reserved ¼ cup of vanilla batter in your smaller bowl, take about 3 teaspoons of the chocolate batter and mix it in~ this will give you a very light chocolate colored batter
13. Now pipe this lighter color batter as shown in the video tutorial
14. Now pipe the remaining darker chocolate batter that you still have leftover over the lighter batter as shown in the video
15. Now with the remaining vanilla batter gently cover over the designs in each pan with an equal amount of batter until there is no more & the designs are covered completely
16. And bake immediately in the preheated 350°F oven for 25 minutes, then turn the oven temperature down to 325°F to bake the rest of the way, approximately 20 minutes more or when you gently press the centers they are springy to the touch. Or do the toothpick test for moist crumbs. *Since the cake recipe is larger than normal these layers will bake slightly longer be careful not to under bake or your centers will be gooey
17. Cool in the pan(s) until you can safely touch them without burning yourself then turn the cake(s) out onto a cooling rack to cool the rest of the way.
18. Prepare the buttercream recipe according to the instructions on that page and then divide it with approximately 1½ cups for the dark chocolate decor and ½ cup for the light color decor
19. Once again make a cocoa paste with the hot water & cocoa powder and then add it *cooled* to the 1½ cups of buttercream
20. Next using just about a teaspoon of that darker BC color add it to the small ½ cup bowl of BC to make the lighter color
21. Build & Decorate the cake as shown in the video tutorial

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