Today I am showing you how to make a lumberjack cake for Canada day! This is a checkerboard cake decorating design in a plaid pattern that will impress anyone when you slice into it and reveal the surprise!
Subscribe to Cupcakes and Cardio for two new videos every week.
If you didn’t know already, I am from Canada, and we are so lucky to live here. There are two official languages in our country, English and French. So for this video, I decided I would call upon my years of french courses in school and attempt to speak it in this video. I’d like to thank the Academy and my grades 4 through 11 French teachers.
Bilingualism, maple syrup, hockey and poutine are probably the most stereotypical things about Canada. And that we’re all polite. Canada’s version of the Forth of July is on July 1, and called Canada Day (imagine that). We have Canada Day to celebrate the union of three separate colonies joining into one within the British empire. It took place in the 1867 as the British North American Act and was renamed Canada Day in the 80’s. All good things happened in the 80’s.
Despite our separation from the British control, we still embrace their candy bars here. Flake Bars are a British candy bar that I managed to find at Bulk Barn. Bulk Barn has a decent assortment of imported candy and I bought them out of Flake bars at my local store. Sorry everyone else. You do not have to use Flake bars for this, as pretty much any similar chocolate bar (candy bar) will work. You could also just use chocolate buttercream with some etching with a fork.
I live in Western Canada, and the idea of the lumberjack is pretty common since our industry is mainly focused on forestry (at least where we are). We have millions of acres of untouched forested areas. Logging has seen a decrease in the last few years, but I remember as a kid, many people in our town were employed in the industry. Unfortunately for those families, many of them faced the shut down of the local mills and were faced with unemployment. Anyway . . . so we’ve seen a downgrade in the importance of the forest industry locally, but the flannel/plaid look still remains strong in our area and in Canada!
How to Make a Lumberjack Cake
Ingredients
- 4 x 8″ vanilla cakes: two burgundy, one black, one red
- Black, brown, tan vanilla buttercream and chocolate buttercream
- Flake bars (I found them at Bulk Barn)
Procedure:
- Prepare cakes, and cut into four rings each. Mix the black and burgundy cakes up, the red and burgundy to equal four different cake layers.
- Attach cake layers to a cake board and fill each layer with black buttercream.
- Cover entire stacked cake in brown (chocolate) buttercream. Cover the top with tan buttercream.
- Using a large fork, etch circular lines around the cake. Fill lines with chocolate buttercream and using a cake spatula flatten and blend the lines.
- To create cracks in the wood, mark out a small divot, fill with chocolate buttercream and blend with a paint brush.
- Trim Flake bars to the same height of the cake and place around the sides of the cake.
- Slice and serve when desired. Cake is best consumed within 2-3 days, and kept in a sealed container in the fridge.
Where do you buy these flake bars??? Can’t wait to make this for my family
I found them at our local Bulk Barn store.
I followed the link to your vanilla cake recipe. Did you do one single recipe of the cake & divide into 4 pans for the lumberjack cake, or did you double the recipe? Thanks for your help!
You need to triple it
I doubled it and had enough for the 4 layers.
Heya! So excited/nervous to make this for the first time. Where do I find gel paste? And after the cakes are baked you froze them to get clean cuts? Thanks! Looks amazing!
Have fun!!
Can you make this using Red velvet cake???
I’m using a box mix. So how many boxes do I need to do?
How did you go about cutting the circles for the cakes out of construction paper? Did you just measure the beginning circle of the cake pan, then went in another inch, then another so forth. That construction paper thing is a little confusing. Also does it matter which colors fit into each thing? Thanks.
Yes, exactly that. The cake pan is 8″ so I cut according to that. The color order doesn’t matter, but make sure the same colors don’t stack on each other.
Hi! Love your cakes! I was really wondering how after baking your cakes there so clean and when you cut into them there so clean-cut are they frozen when you do this process example the lumberjack cake I find every time I cut into cakes there so messy!
Thank you in advance,
Brittany
Having a frozen cake is the first thing, and also after the slice, I clean the piece with a toothpick, and/or knife. It’s painstaking! But creates a clean cut.
How do you get the burgundy color? I see basic instructions for black and red but not the burgundy.
Its just a bit of both red and black…easy on the black.
This is amazing! I’ve made it twice now to practice for my sons first birthday. One question – how did you cut it so flawlessly. When I cut into it, it all kind of smears together and looks messy.
A hot, super sharp knife works well, as does cutting it when it’s frozen
How do you get the checker design? Slap my face and color me stupid but I just dont see how to do that! lol
Hi,
Could you tell me how you do the color ? I’m not a good cook!
thank you very much
Hi,
I’m trying to recreate this cake and the only thing I can’t achieve is the burgundy color cake. I am using Americolor brand food coloring and I can’t get the color combination right. I keep coming up with a plum color. In your video, you said you mixed the red and black to get burgundy. How much of each color did you use? Any suggestions or tips on how I can get a burgundy cake would be greatly appreciated! Please help, my sons birthday is in a week and I’ve made at least 8 cakes trying to get this to look right ;)!
Thanks,
Emily
I don’t measure my gel paste..wish I did and then I could help you exactly…but I put a lot of red (lets say tablespoon) and a small amount of black (lets say teaspoon). The colour of your batter will match the color of the cake once it’s baked, so don’t bake it until you have the right colour. You can play with the red and black until you get it.
Thank you!
How much gel dye did you use. I ran a trial and had a pink and purple cake lol
If you got pink, you didn’t add enough red…the color of the batter will match the color of the baked cake, so don’t bake it until the color is right. If you got purple….I have no idea what you did LOL
I got a purple color too using black and red! I had no idea what to do next so I had a plum color cake 😉
ME too!
How tall was this calendar compared to the flake bars? Like could you do another layer or two? The!
You could maybe do half a layer more….maybe.
How many flake bars did you use? I’m in America so they are pretty costly and don’t want to over spend. Thank you
You’d have to count around the cake picture…I bought an entire box (42 bars) and used most of them.