Cake #18: Basket o' Berries

Since it's been so extremely brutal at work the past few weeks, I wanted to take a special summer pick-me-up cake for a little relief; with Independence Day this Friday, I also decided my cake need to have a patriotic feel.

I originally saw this cake on Cakecentral a few months ago and knew I had to try it. I baked two 8" white cakes to make a 4-layer cake with strawberry-favored buttercream. Since I've used the basket weave technique on several different cakes, I decided to spice it up ever so slightly by using a different tip, which gave me the smooth weave. Unfortunately, I failed to tint my base layer of buttercream so there are several places where the white buttercream underneath glares out!

After completing the weave, I simply added a shell border around the top and then some fresh summer berries. I had originally hoped to use the rope border around both the top and bottom, but the amount of buttercream required to cover this cake was amazing; after competing the basket weave, I barely had enough left for the shells around the top!