Ingredients

The following ingredients have 10 Servings
  • 340 g (1 3/4 cups) sugar (granulated or caster sugar )
  • 255 g ( 2 1/4 cups) plain flour
  • 4 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 170 g (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter (cold and cubed)
  • 240 ml (1 cup) whole milk (ideally room temperature)
  • 180 ml (3/4 cup) pasteurised liquid egg whites (or from 6 eggs)
  • 2 tsp almond extract
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • pink paste food colouring
  • 180 ml (3/4 cup) pasteurised liquid egg whites (or from 6 eggs)
  • 500 g (6 cups) icing sugar
  • 500 g (3 cups) unsalted butter (room temperature)
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • 1/4 tsp salt

Instruction

  • Preheat the oven to 180C. Spray 4 x15cm/6in cake tins (or 3x20cm/8in tins) with cake release and line with baking parchment.
  • Put the (empty) bowl of your stand mixer on the scales and make a note of the weight.
  • Put the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer and briefly beat together with the paddle attachment on low speed to combine.
  • Add the cubed butter and beat on low speed until the mixture resembles coarse sand.
  • In a measuring jug, mix together the milk, egg whites and extracts.
  • Add the liquid ingredients into the batter, in three stages, mixing well on low speed after each addition. Increase the speed and mix for a couple of minutes until batter is smooth.
  • Weigh your (full) mixing bowl again and subtract the weight of the empty bowl. Divide the weight of the batter into 3 or 4 depending on how many cake tins you are using.
  • Fill one prepared cake tin with untinted batter. This is your white layer.
  • Put a ladleful of the batter in a small bowl and use pink paste food colouring to create a fairly strong pink shade.
  • Add a small amount of your prepared pink batter to the mixing bowl and mix really well until you have a pale pink. Don’t make the shade too subtle - compare it to your white layer. Add this to the second tin.
  • Add more of the tinted batter to build up the colour for your third layer and pour same amount into third your tin.
  • Now tint your final layer and put into fourth tin.
  • Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the cakes are well risen, firm on top and coming away from the sides of the tin. A skewer inserted in the centre should come out clean.
  • Cool in the tins for 10 minutes and then carefully turn out on a wire rack lined with baking paper (the cake layers are quite sticky). Cool completely before frosting.