Airplane Cake Recipe

For the Cake

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray two 8-inch round cake pans with nonstick spray and line the inside bottom of each pan with parchment paper. Set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, stir the dry cake mix, flour, granulated sugar, and salt together. Set aside for now.
3. In a separate large bowl, using a hand mixer, beat the buttermilk, sour cream, eggs, and vanilla extract together on high until well combined.
4. Beat the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients on high until smooth, about 1 minute.
5. Pour cake batter evenly between both prepared cake pans (about 749 grams per pan). Try to get the same amount in each pan so that the cake layers bake up to the same size.
6. Bake for 33-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean.
7. Remove cakes from oven and let cakes cool in pans for 15 minutes before removing cakes from pans. Place cake layers on a wire rack and allow cakes to cool to room temperature.
8. Once cakes have cooled to room temperature, cover cakes completely in food-safe plastic wrap (wrap each layer separately) and refrigerate cake layers for two hours. Chilled cakes are easier to decorate since they don’t crumble as easily.
9. Once cakes have been removed from the fridge, use a large serrated knife to cut the dome tops off both cakes so they both have a flat top. You won’t need these dome tops so feel free to snack on those while you work on the rest of the cake.

For the Frosting

1. In a large bowl, using a hand mixer, beat the powdered sugar, butter, and vanilla extract on high speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. If the frosting is too thick to smooth onto the cake, beat in a tablespoon of heavy cream. If the frosting seems too thin, add a bit more powdered sugar.

For Assembly

1. Place a thin layer of frosting (about 2 tablespoons) in the middle of a cake board or cake plate then place one cake (cut side facing up) on top of that frosting. This small amount of frosting helps to secure the cake to the cake plate so it doesn’t slide around during the decorating process.
2. Add a generous layer of frosting on top of that first cake layer then place the second cake layer (bottom facing up) on top of the first cake layer.
3. Frost a thin layer of frosting around the top and sides of cake. This first thin layer of frosting is meant as a base to help secure crumbs to the cake. This first layer of frosting should be thin so it’s okay if you can still see the cake through the frosting. To get the layers of frosting smooth, use a tool like a cake scraper to smooth the icing out.
4. Place the lightly frosted cake in the freezer for 10 minutes so the frosting hardens up a bit before frosting the next layer.
5. Place about 2 cups of white frosting into an icing bag with a large round piping tip (like the Ateco 808). Color the remaining frosting in the bowl blue (for this blue I used Chefmaster Liqua-gel in the color Royal Blue).
6. Remove cake from freezer and apply the second layer of frosting – this will be the blue frosting. Spread this layer as smoothly as you can using the cake scraper.
7. Pipe a few white dots randomly around the sides of the cake. Not too many as we still want the cake to mostly be blue. Use the cake scraper to smear those dots smoothly onto the cake. This will give a cloudy look to the frosting.
8. Use the remaining white frosting to pipe frosting around the top of the cake including a few clouds on the top of the cake. Place the airplane cake toppers on those clouds.