Baking Spirits Bright

We’ve been baking up a storm lately! My favorite this year was this naked cake. I’ve been seeing naked cakes everywhere on pinterest and instagram lately and just love how they look.

They are beautiful and look EFFORTLESS.

I couldn’t wait to try to make one myself and thought with the holidays, this is the perfect time. I’m definitely not an expert baker and this turned out SO delicious. Plus, it was super easy to make!

Directions, ingredients and a few tips to make yours picture perfect are below.

Taylor has been helping me in the kitchen quite often these days and we had a little fun baking spirits bright together!

Confetti Plate (similar) | Cake Knife with Bow | Cake Stand (similar) 

Naked Holiday Cake Recipe

What you’ll need:

• Rosemary
• Cranberries
• Sugar
• Cake Mix (my favorite is Betty Crocker’s White cake mix)
• Frosting
• Baking pan (we used this 6″x2″)
• White sparkling sprinkles (optional)

Sugared Cranberries: I started with the sugared cranberries first. I boiled 3 cups of sugar and 3 cups of water together to make simple syrup. Then rolled the cranberries in the syrup and added extra sugar. For us, these were more for decoration because of all the sugar but they are certainly edible!

Making the Cake! This was the most time consuming part because I only had one cake pan. I baked 3 separate cakes and layered them on top. I baked each layer for about 11-13 minutes at 350 degrees (using one box of Betty Crocker’s white cake mix).

Frosting: I frosted the middle layer with Betty Crocker’s whipped frosting (you can use any frosting of your choice of course). I like how the whipped frosting seems easier to work with. I then added a super light layer of frosting to the other two layers.  Keeping it naked 😉

For the top, I melted the frosting in the microwave for 10 seconds so it would easily pour over without much dripping. I can never seem to properly frost a cake without pulling the cake pieces up.. so melting it slightly helps me SO much.

Decorations: I also added some white sparkling sprinkles to the frosting for a little extra shimmer. Next, add the sugared cranberries and rosemary to your desire.

Since I’m far from perfecting my baking skills, I added a few extra cranberries on the side that helped cover some of the cake pieces that were crumbling. It was easy to fill in the spaces and you couldn’t even tell they weren’t meant to be there!

With all the holiday cakes, cookies and hot cocoa bars (highly recommended!), I’m going to need a serious sugar detox in the new year 😉 But, until then, I may just have to sneak a few more treats…

Happy baking!

PIN THIS FOR LATER!