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Christmas Drip Cake

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vegan reindeer biscoff cake with a biscoff drip

This vegan Christmas drip cake is a 2-layer 8” or 9” round biscoff cake. It has an almond buttercream frosting and a thick biscoff drizzle. I decorated it to look like a reindeer. The recipe includes instructions for the reindeer decoration. But you can also skip the reindeer part and just have a traditional Christmas biscoff cake.

This recipe makes a 2-layer 8” or 9” inch round cake (12-16 servings).

Table of Contents

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♫ Listening to ♫

Christmas Day in the Sun by Hot Hot Heat

This adorable reindeer Christmas drip cake isn’t only appropriate for the December holidays. I actually made this for my friend Briana’s birthday. I’ve never met anyone who is more into Christmas than Briana. So trust me when I say that this was the perfect birthday cake for her.

A reindeer might be too childlike for you, your family, or Santa Claus (he’s a serious guy). This recipe has alternative decoration suggestions for a more elegant Christmas drip cake.

How to Make 2 Round Biscoff Cakes for this Christmas Cake

prep time: 15 min | bake time: 25 min

Follow my biscoff cake recipe for the cake portion of this recipe. Double the ingredients, but follow the rest of the recipe as instructed.

Divide the batter between two 8-inch or 9-inch round cake pans after coating them in oil and lining them with parchment paper. If you’re not sure what I mean by this, read the recipe for my nutella cake.

2 cake pans filled with vegan biscoff cake batter.

Bake at 350°F (175ºC) for 25 minutes.

Insert a toothpick into the center of both cakes. If it comes out clean, the cakes are ready to take out of the oven. If it doesn’t, set the timer for 5 minutes and repeat the toothpick test. Baking time depends on so many factors: what your cake pans are made of, how hot your oven runs, and how long the oven was preheating before you put your cake in.

Cool on cooling racks until the entire cake pans are cool to the touch (even the centers).

Vegan Almond Buttercream Frosting

prep time: 15min

Follow my almond buttercream frosting for the frosting portion of this recipe.

If you prefer vanilla frosting, replace the almond extract with pure vanilla extract.

vegan almond buttercream frosting.

Biscoff Drip

prep time: 3 min

Follow my biscoff sauce recipe for the drip portion of this Christmas drip cake recipe. The consistency is important. If you like thick drips that don’t go all the way down the cake like I do, you want to use less liquid. If you prefer thinner drips that go all the way down the cake, you can use more liquid to thin the sauce more.

Passing on the reindeer cake? Want a more elegant Christmas drip cake? Double the biscoff sauce recipe recipe so it covers the entire top of the cake.

food processor filled with vegan lotus biscoff cookies.

How to Assemble and Decorate a Reindeer Cake

decorating time: 40 min (not including making the ears and antlers) | wait time: 3 hours

Dollhouse Shortcut

You can make or purchase inedible ears and antlers for your reindeer cake to save time on decorating.

Level the cakes by trimming off some of the tops of each cake if they aren’t already flat on top.

Fill the 2 layers of cake with frosting.

Cover the outside of the 2-layer stacked cake with a crumb coat of frosting. Assembling the cake and covering it in a crumb coat of frosting took me 7 minutes.

vegan biscoff cake covered in a crumb coat of frosting.

Chill the cake while you prepare the frosting for decorating the cake to look like a reindeer.

Color a little bit of the frosting. I made black and pink. Check out my list of vegan food coloring for brands that you can trust.

coloring vegan frosting for cake decorating.

Draw your reindeer face onto a piece of acetate if you are worried about freehanding it. I am not a good artist so I drew my basic reindeer face shape on mine. If you don’t have acetate, you can use parchment paper for your buttercream transfer.

drawing the outline of the reindeer face onto the acetate to prepare for making the buttercream transfer.

Pipe the facial features on the acetate first. I used a decopen because it gives me more control than a piping bag.

piping the reindeer facial features onto the acetate.

Fill in the rest of the deer’s face with white frosting. Try not to leave any gaps of air. Preparing the buttercream transfer took me 10 minutes.

piping the white frosting for the reindeer face.

Add the final coat of frosting, smoothing it out with an offset spatula or a scraper. If you have a cake turntable, it will make this process quicker and easier.

Smoothing out the final coat of white frosting on the cake.

Press the acetate or parchment paper ever so lightly onto the cake. Some people chill their design in the fridge for 10-15 minutes before doing this step. I didn’t. Maybe my lines would have been crisper if I had. Do not remove the parchment or acetate yet. It took me 11 minutes to add the final coat of frosting and the buttercream transfer.

Pressing the buttercream transfer onto the top of the cake.

Freeze the cake with the parchment or acetate still stuck to it. It will peel off easily once the frosting is completely frozen.

Make your antlers and ears while you wait. I used my black cocoa cookie dough to make mine and then attached them to the cake with toothpicks. I then drove this cake to a birthday party for 2 hours. That’s when things took a turn for the worse. The antlers ended up breaking. So sad. If you plan to travel with this cake, I recommend making your antlers and ears out of something else. I would say melted chocolate, but then you have to worry about heat. Maybe colored rice paper?

I had some leftover pink frosting from my reindeer’s nose. So, I decorated the inside of the deer’s ears with some pink frosting.

Coloring in the ears with pink buttercream frosting.

Remove the cake from the freezer after 3-4 hours of freezing.

Slowly and carefully peel the parchment or acetate off of the cake leaving your deer’s face.

peeling the acetate off the cake, leaving the deer face on the cake.

Pour or spoon the biscoff drizzle onto the part of the cake that is above the face.

Spread it out with a mini offset spatula (or any tool you have), coaxing the drips to spill over the sides. This step took me 7 minutes.

adding the biscoff drip to the cake. side view of the vegan christmas drip cake.

Add the ears and antlers.

top view of the vegan christmas drip cake.

If the kawaii reindeer cake isn’t your style, ARE YOU HEARTLESS? Just kidding. You can add the biscoff drip to the entire cake and top with festive sprinkles.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I personalize this Christmas drip cake with a message?

Personalizing this cake is a great alternative to the reindeer design. Chill the cake after you add the biscoff drip, and while the cake chills, prepare a Lékué deco pen with some frosting. Once the biscoff drip has firmed up, write your holiday greeting on top of the cake with the decopen.

What do I do with leftover biscoff drizzle?

I always save all my leftover frostings and fillings. I used my leftover biscoff drizzle on a chocolate cake I made the following month. The biscoff sauce stayed good for a whole month in my fridge! You can also use it on cupcakes, brownies, or cookies.

Can this Christmas cake be made with eggnog cake instead of biscoff cake?

Want to make an eggnog Christmas cake with a biscoff drip? Follow the eggnog cupcake recipe instructions with some slight modifications. Triple the cupcake ingredients for an eggnog cake. Double the frosting ingredients for eggnog frosting. When you get to the part where you add batter to cupcake liners, divide into 2 round cake pans instead.

Ingredient Substitutions

All the ingredient substitutions are on the individual recipe pages below.

The only ingredients I added for this cake were the food coloring for the facial features. I used black cocoa powder for the black frosting and Wilton pink food coloring for the pink frosting. For alternatives, please see my comprehensive list of vegan food coloring.

Video

Here’s a video of me making this reindeer cake.

Comments or Questions?

If you make this recipe, I would love it if you’d snap a pic, post to instagram, and tag me @vegandollhouse. It seriously makes my day/week/month!

Please message me (instagram or email) if you have any questions or feedback about the recipe.

Other Christmas Drip Cake Ideas

Here are other drip cake recipes that could magically become Christmas drip cakes.

  • Chocolate and mint are a popular Christmas flavor combination. This chocolate mint cake has a ganache drip, and a naturally-colored green frosting.
  • German chocolate cake is traditional at Christmas. This german chocolate cake has a chocolate ganache drip. Since it’s already brown, it would be easy to convert into a reindeer cake.
  • I know chocolate and coconut cake isn’t a traditional Christmas cake flavor. But, I think with the right decorations, this could become a super cute Christmas drip cake. Think vegan white chocolate snowflakes and snowy morning sprinkles.

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Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The adorable reindeer not only looks like Christmas, but it tastes like Christmas.
Briana -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Wow, I don't have any plans to bake and decorate a cake but I read the whole recipe and the way you wrote this up is super helpful! I really like that you give such detailed instructions, there's no fluff before the recipe, and you give time estimates for every step.
afriy -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

It's so cute!
LevelJoy -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ooh, very nice. I can feel my waist expanding already!😋🤭
MichaelAskew -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Beautiful and so cute 🥰
blessmyfoodbypaypal -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is so adorable
iMbee -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The cookie decoration is genius! I think they just may need to be added after any transport. I love the balance this cake strikes between being really nicely decorated and also looking appetizing and "like food" if that makes sense. It's gorgeous and I want a reason to make it now!!
OkAir8973 -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Absolutely adorable!
mellowtimes -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Customer complaint--Too pretty to eat the Bambi 🙂 Thank you for sharing your delightful recipe, that's an awesome cookie 💐⭐
Valuable_Tone_2254 -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Adorbs!
Lenn_Cicada -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Just so everyone who makes this recipe knows, skipping the reindeer decorating part is actually illegal
thatsmallblonde -⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐