Make Your Cake Look Like Cherry Blossom Trees Inside With A Simple Trick

Much care and attention go into the exterior of a cake — spreading perfectly smooth icing, creating delicate petal-like decorations, using intricate frosting patterns and colors. There's nothing quite as impactful and wow-inspiring, though, as a surprise delight on the inside, revealed only upon cutting into the baked confection. Whether you're making a just-because treat or a birthday celebration stunner, level up from plain Jane interiors next time with a gorgeous cherry blossom design that's actually far less complex to pull off than you'd think. 

We've all seen the celebrity and social media cake mavens who concoct wildly elaborate cakes with gazillions of layers or colors or fancy hacks. While gorgeous, they might not be something the average home baker would attempt. This interior "marbling" style trick is so foolproof you can even enlist the help of your family's mini bakers since it requires very little precision. All you'll need is your favorite classic white cake recipe  — or some upgraded boxed cake mix  — plus a little chocolate cake batter (which you can easily make from reserving some of the vanilla cake mix) and store-bought pink sprinkles. The stunning result is a cross-section redolent of the branches and blossoms of a cherry tree in full bloom in your piece of cake.

This striking and colorful interior comes from blogger Buttermilk by Sam, who shared an Instagram story depicting some of the process for making a cherry blossom cake. The idea is essentially to create a marbled cake interior with ribbons of chocolate batter piped thinly onto the vanilla base — which is mixed with pink sprinkles — before it bakes. The key is making the dark lines thin enough for the whole design to look like delicate tree branches festooned with blossoms. The technique itself is easy, but you'll want to opt for sprinkles that don't leach too much of their pigment when hitting the wet batter (this means staying away from nonpareils). Sam also uses multiple shades of pink sprinkles for a more visually complex finished product.

@buttermilkbysam

I love DC's cherry blossoms so much I make this cake every year to celebrate peak bloom 🌸 #spring #cherryblossom #springdiy

♬ Spring – TELL YOUR STORY music by Ikson™

While it's possible to use a loaf or sheet pan, it also makes an impressive layer cake, as Sam demonstrated on TikTok. With the sprinkle-studded vanilla batter ready to go, pour a ½ inch layer into a cake pan and top it with thin, branch-like ribbons of the chocolate batter. Repeat this process, adding another layer of pink-speckled batter covered in branch-like squiggles, and bake as normal. In keeping with the floral theme, you can decorate the outside with petals, or use the easy "petal" decoration method that requires only a spoon and a bag. Cut your cake to reveal a stunning scene of blossom-covered branches on each slice.