Sourdough Vanilla Cake (with decoration)

It was my kid's birthday this week. We are planning the party when the weather gets better. I did make her cup cakes to take to school, but she didn't actually 'cut the cake' on that day. When I was talking to some of my friends, I actually asked just a couple of families to come this weekend so that she can cut the cake and the others can sing her 'Happy Birthday' song. Since I had some bubbly sourdough to use up, I decided to make cake out of it. When I asked my daughter what she wanted, she said "Vanilla Cake". She turned six and she has seen me decorate cakes for the past 3 years. For her cake, she usually chooses the color, design and even when they don't work very well, I have to make it work. She wanted butterfly design cake and here is my take on it. I tried brush embroidery, but apparently I need lot of practice doing that.
One of the side views..

A collage of other side views..

Cake will be cut in the evening and I don't know if I will have any left to take a picture in the day light tomorrow. Look at the crumb in the picture where in I have shown torted cakes. Icing is buttercream icing. You can refer to my 'cake decorating' series for the recipe.

One year back - Khasta Kachori
Ingredients:
All purpose flour - 2 3/4 cups
Sourdough starter - 1 cup (fed)
Sourcream - 1 cup
Oil - 1/2 cup
Applesauce - 1/2 cup (You could increase oil to 1 cup if you don't want to use this)
Sugar - 1 1/2 cups
Egg - 2 Large
Salt - 1 tsp
Baking soda - 1 1/2 tsp
Vanilla - 1 TBSP

Cake decorating pictures.. (All the pictures below were taken under my yellow kitchen light. I work on decorating either early in the morning or in the night when kids are asleep)

Method:
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour two 8" round cake pans or line with parchment paper. Set aside. In a bowl, whisk together sugar, baking soda, salt, flour. Set aside. In another bowl, combine oil, eggs, applesauce, sourcream. Whisk well. Slowly whisk in the sourdough starter. Stir Vanilla in. Add the dry mix to wet mix and stir until combined. Divide evenly between the pans and bake for 35 - 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on the rack for 10 minutes and then turn it on to the wire rack to cool completely.

Go to town with decorating.
Notes:
Since I was baking this with the intention of decorating, I used bake even strips to prevent too much of doming. I got 2" height 2 layers.

Check out what other ladies are up to..
Srivalli, Azeema, Gayathri Kumar, Harini, Jay, Kamalika, Meena, Mina, Padma, Pavani,  PJ,  Priya Suresh,Priya Mahadevan,  Rujuta, Santosh, Saraswathi, Savitha, Shanavi, Smitha, Sowmya, Suma, Usha, Veena.

Since this cake has sourdough in it, I am sending this to Susan's Yeastspotting.

Enjoy.

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