I have been home, back in RI for a week, a little over a week. So far I have had several wonderful happenings. Chris and I are officially, even on Facebook. My busted wrist is broken but does not require surgery. Interrobanging with the magazine has proved fruitful and we are close to finishing up the judgments for Issue 3. I baked another cake.
Oh, yes. I baked a cake. With frosting.
I brought home a block of the Callebaut White Chocolate with intention on making another cake to share. I did manage to share a little leftover Lavender Frosting with friends and family but really needed to make a cake to show off how delicious that white chocolate cake really is.
And I made it special for Chris' parents! Dinner & dessert with his parents gave me an opportunity to show off / bake for new people.
In lieu of partying with the Battey kids at a drag-extravaganza at the Biltmore, Chris and I borrowed my parents house for the evening. He made delicious gourmet pizza, tossed the dough like a true culinary artist, and made a tasty white pizza with basil, tomatoes, proscitto, and fresh motz and fancy parmesano reggiano. Every single animal in the house (2 cats and 3 dogs) joined us at the dinner table and begged for bites.
The cake was similar to the last post, but this was a layer cake. All the substitutions suggested I utilized this time around and I actually got to weigh the white chocolate. I doubled it and made two 8" cakes. Also - I threw in a package of fresh red raspberries.
The frosting this time around was white chocolate, using 2 oz. of the chocolate, melted in a double boiler with 2 tablespoons of heavy cream. 2 drops red food coloring for pinkness to compliment the raspberries. I also threw in another half stick of butter into the mix. This made the frosting really hard when I stuck it in the fridge. It also made it fucking delicious!
Best way to attack this cake, especially when there's other things to do with your significant other on an evening alone, is to prepare in steps. Prep all the ingredients ahead of time - especially when you have to soften the butter and get the eggs at room temperature. Assemble properly - see "For the Love of Frosting! Part One" - bake those cakes, make the frosting, and then wait for the cakes to cool overnight, refrigerate the frosting in tupperware.
Notes on cake baking. A discovery! Gas and Electric Stoves are different. Duh. My discovery was that electrics are a bit more efficient. The cakes brown a lot more. So I turned down the temp to 325 instead of 350. Raspberries should be added just as carefully as the egg white/sugar mixture so I gently added those with the second half of that. I thought that they might float within the cake, but they didn't, but that's OK. They're still in there...
Notes on frosting. I insisted to Chris that the flavors weren't balanced in the frosting. He said it was fine. (He also polished up the batter bowl with the eagerness of a 8-yr-old.) I was afraid to add more sugar because that would make it too hard. And it was really too much butter. The solution came when I took it out in the morning to beat it in the Kitchen Aid (yes! I got to use my parents' Kitchen Aid!) I grabbed additional heavy cream and probably added 3-4 tablespoons to make it a little more workable. Totally balanced the flavors! Yeah intuition!
Frosting this layer cake was fun. I didn't have to level the cakes because they were so heavy that they really flattened out overnight. (PS- make sure you cover in plastic wrap to retain the moisture.) The frosting is still thick and can sometimes tear the cake when you're spreading it. After experimenting with a few utensils, I found a cheese spreader, the kind you would put out at a party for brie or other soft cheeses, did the trick. I also managed a pretty pattern with it. It took a long time to spread this frosting. I licked my fingers a lot. Mmmmm....breakfast.
The final touch to impress the parents was a trick I learned reading the Coffee and Chocolate Bible: making chocolate leaves. I took additional white chocolate and spread it on the underside of three bay leaves, let it set in the freezer, then placed the decoration on the cake. Pret-ty! I used some strange utensil in a random drawer...might have been the other end of a fondue fork I think, but a paintbrush reserved for your kitchen should work better.
The final cake was beautiful!
And then I melted it.
Just a little end. Note to anyone stupid enough to leave cake next to the vent on the stove. DON'T DO IT! Yeah...a corner of the cake got a little melted when I reheated pizza from the night before for lunch. I couldn't fix it because the frosting was too soft. I ended up just putting it in Chris's fridge later that day and shrugging my shoulders with an "O, well." Funny short story - I discovered the mishap on my way down to the car for transport. I freaked and accidently caught my finger in the front door on the way back to the kitchen to fix it. When I realized I couldn't, I got flustered and attended to the finger. I put it under cold running water and started crying. My father came in and said something along the lines of, "O! Did you really hurt your finger?" To which I replied, "No. I'm crying because of the cake!" The fact that I was wearing makeup and didn't want it to smudge got me to promptly stop crying. Didn't want to look like a hot mess in front of the boyfriend's parents. I am such a fucking girl sometimes.
To make a long story short, the cake was a hit. I impressed the parents with the beautiful, slightly injured cake. I brought it over to the Julias' house to share and visit with an upset Jules (men suck...except for mine) and make Jay a little jealous that I'm watching her puppy back in New Orleans grow up. Brought the cake home for my sister and my parents. Accolades all around.
One last warning about this delicious cake - it packs a punch of sweetness and calories that I realized after having two pieces in one night, getting a bit of an ache in the tummy. It's really an occasional cake, as in, it better be for an occasion where calories and fat don't matter. Some statistics post-bake & eat:
5 cups of sugar (well, 3 are confectioners...)
3 1/2 sticks of butter
6 oz of White Chocolate
4 eggs (that's not too bad. I guess.)
Deca(dent-in-your-diet.) Enjoy while your thighs are that much thinner. You'll literally impress the pants off people with this cake.
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