Get your Mardi Gras celebrations going with this Mardi Gras Party Cake! Butterscotch and cinnamon give this cake a unique flavor that is piled seven layers high. Colorful frosting gives this cake the needed festive Fat Tuesday treatment!
Paying homage to New Orleans’ famous doberge style cake, this Mardi Gras Party Cake is half doberge and half parade float. I describe it as a parade float, because this cake is seriously that monstrous in size.
The recipe needed a some alterations from it’s mid-century pamphlet origins. Butterscotch seldom has that luscious rich caramel flavor. Instead it turns into a caramel colored substance that’s closer in flavor to corn syrup. To combat the sweetness, I added a hefty dose of cinnamon. The cake itself needed more fat, so I added oil. That sort of addition did not interfere with the ratio of ingredients. In fact, the addition of more fat made for a smoother, moister crumb.
I did not write out a batch of frosting, feel free to use any sturdy buttercream. In reality, you need like 4 to 5 batches of frosting to coat this behemoth of a cake. Yes it is a 1: 1 ratio of cake to frosting but this is Marti Gras! It’s the last bug bash before a shameful bout of lent and restriction.
I’m providing the cake recipe only because the frosting recipe is a basic buttercream. I made 4 1/2 batches of frosting in order to layer and decorate the cake.
Lets enjoy this cake and parade it around like it was a float going down Bourbon Street!
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- For the Marti Gras Party Cake:
- 1 1/3 cup butterscotch chips
- 1/3 cup water
- 4 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 2 teaspoons fine salt
- 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 ½ cups granulated sugar
- 1 cup (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 6 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
- 2/3 cup sour cream, room temperature
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease four 8-inch pans with baking spray, set aside.
- Combine butterscotch chips and water in a small saucepan, place over medium heat, stirring often until chips melt. Remove from heat and let cool.
- In a large bowl, sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon together, set aside.
- Cream sugar, butter, and oil in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Once smooth and lump free, add the eggs, one at a time at medium speed, beating well after each addition. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl down.
- In the meantime, whisk buttermilk, sour cream, and cooled butterscotch mixture together.
- With the mixer on low, add the dry mixture in 3 additions alternately with the wet mixture in two addition, beginning and ending with the dry mixture. Mix until flour just blends into the batter. Use a rubber spatula to give the batter a few stirs by hand.
- Divide the batter between all four pans. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until cakes are springy and a toothpick inserted comes out with a few moist, not wet, crumbs.
- Cool in cake pans for 10 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack to cool completely. For easy cutting, chill cake layers in the refrigerator overnight wrapped tightly in plastic wrap.
- Use a serrated knife to split each cake layer, you’ll have 8 layers, but you’ll only need 7 cake layers.
- Tint some of the frosting green, purple, and yellow. Frost each layer with a different color. Do a crumb coat with white frosting. Decorate with a confetti squiggle of frosting.