What you need:
(as I did it with vanilla cake in this tutorial I needed the following but you can do it with every cake and frosting combination you like!)
- 6 9inch (22,8cm) Vanilla cakes baked in layers of approx. 1 inch high
- 1 glass of strawberry jam (you won’t need the whole glass!)
- ~900g Vanilla Mascarpone Cream (if you do the Mascarpone Frosting from my blog you need it twice and have a small left over after finally frosting your cake)
- ~2kg-2,5kg (10 packs of 250g) white chocolate flayoured/ light yellow dyed ready to roll fondant
- 1 9inch cakeboard/cakecard
- 1 11 or 12 inch cake plate/cakeboard
- 1 jam knife
- 1 fondant knife
- 1 palette knife for the Cream
- 1 disposable/ reusable piping bag
- 1 measuring tape
- 1 9inch cake pan
- 1 paintbrush (a new one or one you only use for food!)
- 1 toothpick to take out the gel colour
- some food grade alcohol
- some gel colour Sugarflairs autumn leaf or Wiltons Ivory
How to do it step by step:
- The cakes:
Bake your cakes and let them cool down completely. I picked my “Perfect Vanilla Cake” for that cake in size 9″ cake pans. (I promise to write a tutorial for my Vanilla cake soon! Just use your own vanilla cake recipe this time or use my Simple white cake!)
I baked my cakes 1 day in advance and let them cool down completely and covered them with a light wet towel over night so that they stay spongy. - Slicing the layers:
You have 6 cakes and those are your 6 layers of cake. You can use all 6 but I used only 5 layers because it looked better. In my opinion 6 layers would be an unrealistic high stack of pancakes and I thought the proportion looked better with only 5 layers but you can do as you like. The one layer I had as a leftover I gave to my brother shaped in little tractors as a cute little birthday cake. He loved it very much! - The Vanilla Mascarpone Cream:
Make the Vanilla Mascarpone Cream after you baked and sliced your cake. You can find a tutorial for the Cream here. - Arranging the cake.
Take the cakeboard and put a small amount of jam in the middle to make the first layer stick to the board. Put the first layer on the board and gently press it on, then put some of the cream, about 3-4 Tbsp into a piping bag and pipe a ring at the outer rim of the layer as a barrier for the jam. After the ring is done spread 1-2 Tbsps jam in the middle till you reach the ring of Vanilla Cream to keep the cake moist and give it a bit of a strawberry taste. After spreading the jam take 2-3 Tbsp of your Vanilla Cream and spread it out on the jam layer. At the end you can unite the ring of Vanilla Cream with the layer you are spreading out to get a firm and flat surface of Cream After you’re done with the Vanilla Cream you put the next layer of cake on the cake. Then again pipe a ring of cream, spread jam and then spread cream on the cake and the next layer of cake.
Do that till you don’t have any cake layers left but don’t cover the last layer of cake like the others.
Before you cover the cake with a crumb coat place it on a bigger cake plate or a bigger cake board so there will be enough space for the pancake rings around the cake.
The last is a bit special as the fondant doesn’t like the fruit acid in the jam so please cover the last layer and the side of the cake just with Vanilla Mascarpone Cream! After covering and crumb coat of the whole cake is done put it in the fridge to dry for approx. 1 hour. - Create the colour for the side of the pancakes that hit the pan:
Take the autumn leaf or ivory gel colour, little glass and the food grade alcohol and the paintbrush. Prepare it all but don’t mix it right away as you’ll need just a small amount of colour for each layer and it will dry too fast. I recommend that you mix the gel colour and the alcohol extra for each layer of pancakes. - Covering the cake:
My cake was about 5inch tall so normally I would used approx. 900g of fondant but you won’t need to cover the cake this time at once but in layers around the cake. So I had 14 packs of white chocolate flavoured fondant – as you know I tend to buy more just in case! 😉
So take one pack of 250g knead it well and roll it into a big sausage. You have to measure the perimeter around your cake so that you know how long you have to roll out the fondant band. As you have the sausage now approx. ¾ of the measurement of the perimeter of the cake (mine was about 17inch long and 1inch thick), take a rolling pin and flatten that sausage to a long band with about 1inch broad (my band was about 27inch long). After that take your fondant knife and divide it by length so you get 2 bands of fondant with one sharp edge and one soft and round edge.
Take one of the bands and press the sharp edge against the cake and make sure that it lays flat on the second cake board and stick to the cake and doesn’t fall off. It doesn’t have to be perfect as pancakes are not perfect round or the same thickness everywhere. It’s ok if it’s thinner or thicker at some point it looks more realistic. You will agree with me when your cake is finished!
Take your colour, mix it with alcohol to a light brown and paint the inner, upper surface of the lowest pancake with a paintbrush as you can see in the picture. Again this doesn’t have to be perfect painted and even there are little gaps or cracks on the edges of the fondant rings it doesn’t matter quite the contrary it looks like a real pancake in the end! Trust me and yourself, you will see what I mean when the cake is finished! …and to give you even more self-confidence I was worried too and thought “Does this really look like pancakes?” after the fist few rings! 🙂 So be brave, trust yourself and go on and build a stack of pancakes!
After you painted the first layer of pancake, take the second band and wrap it around the cake like the first, with the sharp edge on the inner side and the round on the outside. Paint it with the light brown. Maybe you were able to cut a third band or you can knead the rest of the leftover fondant to another band. If you have a third band then wrap it around your cake and paint it.Do it like that till you reach the upper edge of the cake.
Be patient it will take while but it will be worth it! 😉
For the last pancake take about 500g of fondant, knead it well and roll it to a ball. Then flatten the ball and roll it out to a disc about a quarter inch thick. Roll it to a diameter of about 9.5inch so you have a rim that’s cover the last band of your pancake stack and the middle of your cake. For the measuring you can use your 9inch cake pan and cut it out in a pancake shape or a measuring tape.
Take a look at the pictures below and you will see what I mean.
You can also add some glitter to the last Pancake so it will sparkle when you present the cake to your guests. That gives the cake a very glamorous touch and looks amazing!
You can decorate it with fresh berries and also with some small bits of real butter (or you create the butter with fondant).
If you want to pour syrup over the cake do that right before you serve the cake!
Done! There you go a stack of Pancakes cake!
Have fun to create your own Pancake Cake and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask!
This cake was inspired by my cake hero - Yolanda Gampp!