Ombré Birthday Cake... Yum!

My nephew Justin turned the big 3 in early January of this year. Now, he's the very first grandbaby in my family so all of our lives pretty much revolve around this kiddo and any Holiday. He's the most adorable blue eyed stinker there is! But I may be a little partial.

For Justin's small family birthday party I decided to make a different version of the beautiful purple ombre cake I, of course, found on Pinterest. It's incredibly beautiful and my fingers were crossed that I'd get it right!

This is the cake that got my heart pumping and mouth drooling! Purple Ombre Cake

I started with my grocery list. I pretty much made up my entire recipe after seeing the beautiful purple ombré cake.
You need white cake for this to work. If you think yellow will work, you are wrong. It will look like baby poo... trust me. You can make this cake with any filling or frosting you like, I decided to make a cream cheese frosting for the outside and a banana cream cheese frosting for the inside (between the cake layers). 

Shopping List
2 - white cake
2 - cream cheese block
Powdered Sugar
Unstalted Butter
Vanilla
Eggs
Food Coloring (Any of your choice)
Sprinkles (Any color that coordinates with your food coloring choice)

Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe

4 ounces unsalted butter, softened

4 ounces cream cheese, softened

2 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and cream cheese with an electric mixer. With the mixer on low speed, add the powdered sugar a cup at a time until smooth and creamy. Beat in the vanilla extract.

For the banana cream cheese frosting center I used the same Cream Cheese Frosting recipe from above and added 3 medium mashed banana's. Super easy, super yummy. 

I made the two boxes of cake  mix in one bowl and then divided into 5 bowls as evenly as I could without actually measuring.  You leave one alone and don't add any food coloring. I chose blue because this cake is for my adorable lil nephew and what's more boy-ish that blue?! I started by adding 5 drops to the 1st bowl, 10 drops to the 2nd, 15 drops to the 3rd and 20 drops to the 4th. Then from there I mixed each and added more as I saw fit. I really wanted my darkest layer to be vibrant so I added quite a bit to that specific batch.  Then you chose any pan size you want, I went with 10" round just becuase I had 3 of them. It made it the easier.  Just bake each cake to the directions on the box and let cool.  I had to use cooling racks because I didn't have 5 pans. :( 

Once cooled I added my banana cream cheese frosting between each layer, not too thick becuase you don't want your cake to get soggy from the banana's.  I went lightest on the bottom to darkest food coloring on the top. You can decide which you like better.

Then add the regular cream cheese frosting on the exterior of your cake and add sprinkles! Looking back I think the cake would have looked much better if I had trimmed each layer to make sure the circles stayed really round and together. But I'm still pretty happy with it! 

I got some really nice compliments from the family and even the little guy loved it!