Baking your own wedding cake

While I was walking my donkey (yes, I have a donkey, maybe that's a subject for another lens) I talked to my daughter on the phone. I explained my main concerns are dryness and boring flavor.

These days a lot of people like a European torte style cake - thin layers with stuff in between them. That solves both the problems above.

Another possibility would be the route I took with my own wedding cake years ago - I added fruit, on the theory that fruit would keep the cake moist. I pitted hundreds of fresh cherries, cut them in half, and threw them into the chocolate cake batter. Shredded apple or coconut would accomplish the same goal.

My future son-in-law was kind of queasy about fruit so we ditched that idea.

The idea I'm going to try tomorrow is a European one. Problem with American cake recipes: they tell you to take the cake out of the pan and let it cool, but by that time it's all dried out!

So I'm going to cook thin layers, and as soon as they come out of the oven, while they're still hot, I'm going to seal them. I'm going to use a lemon glaze or syrup on one of the layers, and jam on the other. I suggested raspberry, but my future son-in-law doesn't want seeds, so I'll try something else. Maybe apricot.

My daughter suggested lemon so I've got just the thing for this first prototype cake.

Subtitle: "The dangers of improvisation."

I decided to use my 12" pan and cook two thin layers. One layer would be sealed with jam, the other with a lemon glaze.

The recipe I began with was peculiar in two ways.

1. It called for 3 cups of flour, almost 50% more than most other recipes of its size.
2. It had no baking powder or baking soda and did not call for separating the eggs.

I mildly wondered why, but I figured "they" knew best.

When the dough, as predicted, started to look too stiff, I blithely started altering the ingredients, throwing in a little more of this and a little more of that - basically, I was increasing all the other ingredients to balance the too-large amount of flour.

So here's what I did, but I don't recommend you do it.

• 1-1/2 cups of butter (I used salted)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
• 1-1/2 cup sugar
  
• 6 eggs
  
• 1 cup buttermilk
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  
• 3 cups unbleached flour
  
• 3 teaspoons lemon zest (grated rind)
  
• lemon glaze for one layer (see below)
  
• 1/4 cup of seedless raspberry jam (unless you like seeds)

Preheat oven to 350. I greased the pan, floured the sides, and put wax paper in the bottom to be sure the cake doesn't stick. Then I greased the wax paper. This was a success. The cake did not stick at all.

Cream butter, salt, lemon zest, and sugar very thoroughly till light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each.

Add the vanilla and 1/2 cup of buttermilk and 1-1/2 cup of flour and combine. Then Add the other 1/2 cup of buttermilk and 1-1/2 cup of flour and combine. That's it.

I spread half the batter (which was still kind of stiff) in the layer pan, it was about 3/4 of an inch deep.

I cooked it at 350° for twenty minutes, turned it out on an aluminum foil covered sheet of cardboard, and coated it with jam.

Then I cooked the other layer, same way.

I intended to use the following lemon glaze, as found online:

For lemon glaze

• 1/2 cup lemon juice
  
• 1/3 cup sugar
  
• rind of one lemon grated
  
• 1/3 cup water

Combine ingredients, boil for a couple minutes. Pour over hot cake gradually.

However, it tasted like lemonade syrup (duh), so I used only a little of it and mixed it with the jam. We can make lemonade out of the rest.

INTERIM CONCLUSION:

Because there was no baking soda or baking powder AND the recipe did not call for separating the eggs, it has the consistency of polenta. Fail.

However, some things went very well. For instance, it was the right amount of batter to make two thin layers. Making thin layers turned out to be a success (and indubitably less crummy and disastrous than trying to slice one thicker layer in half horizontally).

Also, the flavor is wonderful.

So I'll try again. Next time I'll use more eggs and separated them. I will report back.

I got up long before my kids (who are still jet-lagged from their cross-country flight) and made a new cake. I halved the recipe, added another egg, separated the eggs so I could whip the egg whites, and added some baking powder and soda. This one rose nicely and tasted fabulous.

So - it made one 1" layer in a 12" pan. Again I started by buttering the pan, putting a circle of waxpaper on the bottom of the pan (it glues itself to the butter nicely), buttered the wax paper, and shook a tablespoon or so of flour over the bottom and sides of the buttered pan. Preheat oven to 360°.

• 3/4 cups of salted butter
  
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
  
• 3/4 cup sugar
  
• 4 eggs, separated
  
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
  
• 1 teaspoons vanilla extract
  
• 1-3/8 cups unbleached flour
  
• 1 ts baking powder
  
• 1/2 ts baking soda
  
• 2 teaspoons lemon zest (grated rind)
  
• 1/8 cup of seedless raspberry jam (unless you like seeds)

Cream butter, salt, lemon zest, and sugar very thoroughly till light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each. Beat in the vanilla.

Add the buttermilk and baking powder and soda and flour and combine. Bake at 350° for 25 minutes, turned it out on an aluminum foil covered sheet of cardboard, and coat it with jam.

I found a version of this at www.pastrysampler.com and made a half-batch (as below). I cut my 12" layer of cake (after sealing it with jam and letting it cool) into quarters and put icing between the layers and frosted the outside with this amount of icing. Evidently the original inspiration was "The Cake Bible" by Rose Levy Beranbaum.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup i white chocolate, melted in the microwave, cooled to room temperature
  
• 6 oz. Neufchatel cheese, softened (it's a slightly lower fat cream cheese)
  
• 6 ounces/tablespoons of soft salted butter
  
• 3 tablespoons of lemon juice

Take your chances: the original recipe had no sugar in it at all. I added 2-1/2 cups of confectioners sugar.

Beat cream cheese in mixing bowl until smooth. Gradually beat in the melted and cooled chocolate until incorporated. Add in the butter and lemon juice last, beating well until smooth.

• Melt the chocolate in a microwave, stirring every 15 seconds. It won't look completely melted unless you stir it. Let it cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally.
  
• Use immediately or rebeat at room temperature before frosting.

Also...

• If it gets lumpy, press it through a strainer.
  
• If your room is warm and the buttercream separates, set your bowl in ice water and whisking.
  
• If it gets spongy, rebeat

Perfectly successful:

• Amount of batter made ONE 12" layer of correct height (I was aiming for about 3/4 inch layer when cooked);
  
• Taste: completely scrumptious;
  
• Texture: a little denser than I expected, but wonderful. Tending towards pound cake;
  
• In combination with the white chocolate - cream cheese - buttermilk icing: fabulous.

I cooked it in the morning and stuck it in the freezer for a few minutes to cool it down so I could put on the frosting and stack it BEFORE we left the house for taste testing "boughten" wedding cakes at 9:30 am. Therefore, the icing didn't really have time to set. So the cake tilted (much like the one in the picture at the top of this lens).

However - in general opinion my cake tasted better than any of the three we sampled over the course of the day. So that means, either find a better baker for my daughter's cake or - I'll do it myself.

I made both my favorite chocolate cake recipes recently and this one got the nod from my son, who deems it moist, soft, and delicious.

I make it in two 9" round pans, and it produces layers about 1" high. Even though I use non-stick pans, I still start by buttering the pan, putting a circle of waxpaper on the bottom of the pan (it glues itself to the butter nicely), then I butter the wax paper and shake a bit of flour over the bottom of the buttered wax paper. Preheat oven to 350°.

• 1 cup of salted butter
  
• 2 cups sugar (you could use light brown sugar for half)
  
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
  
• 1 ts baking soda
  
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  
• 2 large eggs, separated
  
• 2-1/3 cup buttermilk
  
• 2 cups unbleached flour
  
• A few tablespoons of seedless raspberry jam (unless you like seeds)

Cream butter, salt, and sugar thoroughly till light and fluffy. Beat in cocoa powder and baking soda.

Add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each. Beat in the vanilla.

Fold in the buttermilk and flour. Bake at 350° for 25 minutes, turn it onto a cake rack to cool. Coat it with jam while it's still hot, but let it cool before icing with your favorite cream cheese icing. I used:

• 8 ounces neufchatel cheese (a low-fat cream cheese substitute)
  
• 4 tablespoons of softened salted butter
  
• ~3 cups powered (confectioners) sugar

I had to look this up. When a man and a woman are engaged to be married, the woman is the fiancée and the man is the fiancé. In English, the two words are pronounced the same way.

If you want to use words with foreign accents here at squidoo, you need to use escape characters. In this case, use the following seven characters with no spaces between them: $ e a c u t e ;. The $ sign at the beginning and the semicolon at the end are the code.

See HTML character codes for more. Thanks, Kate!

The site is so buggy, with pop-up and pop=down ads and reminders to "change the settings on your browser to allow cookies," it feels like malware, so I am including the recipe from Epicurious in the following module. I recommend the series of instructional pages with pictures, however.

Good advice: "Using your offset spatula, smooth the icing down over the top and the sides of the cake. This is called your "crumb layer" of icing as it will catch all of the crumbs and seal them in. Place the tier in the refrigerator to firm up for 20 to 30 minutes, while you assemble the other tiers."

for assembly, you'll need: 6-inch-diameter, 9-inch-diameter and 12-inch-diameter cake pans with 3-inch-high sides; 3 cardboard cake rounds (one 6-inch, one 9-inch and one 12-inch, trimmed to 5, 8 and 11 inches in diameter, respectively)

Cake Ingredients

Nonstick vegetable oil spray
2-pound box cake flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/s teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups salted butter at room temperature
5 cups sugar
3 1/2 cups water, room temperature
6 large egg whites
12 ounces bittersweet chocolate bars, cut into very small pebbly pieces

Position 1 rack in top third and 1 rack in bottom third of oven and preheat to 350°F.

Line cake pans with parchment paper (I like wax paper). Spray parchment and sides of pans.

Beat butter in very large bowl (at least 8-quart capacity) until smooth. Gradually add 3 cups sugar, beating until fluffy.

Sift or stir flour, baking powder and salt together. Add to the creamed mixture in 4 additions alternately with 3 1/2 cups water.

Using clean dry beaters, beat egg whites in another large bowl until medium-firm peaks form. Gradually add remaining 2 cups sugar, beating until whites are very thick and glossy, about 5 minutes.

Fold 1/3 of whites into batter to lighten. Fold in remaining whites in 2 additions. Fold in chocolate pieces.

Spread batter evenly in pans. Place 6- and 9-inch cake pans on top rack in oven and 12-inch cake pan on bottom rack in oven. Bake (teabout 50 minutes for 6- and 9-inch cakes and about 55 minutes for 12-inch cake (test for done-ness with toothpick inserted in center - does it come out clean? The layer is done).

Cool cakes in pans on racks 30 minutes. Cut around cakes; turn out onto racks. Peel off parchment paper; cool cakes completely. Slide cakes onto corresponding cardboard rounds. Wrap cakes with foil; let stand at room temperature 1 day.

Frosting
Several reviewers said this was too much icing and too soft for a non-winter wedding.)

2 3/4 pounds (44 ounces) good-quality white chocolate, chopped
8-1/2 8-ounce packages (68 ounces) cream cheese, room temperature
4 1/4 cups (8 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
7 teaspoons vanilla extract
Bakers Rose gel base (or paste) color #7346 (from one 1-ounce bottle)

Microwave white chocolate to melt it - use short bursts and stir often. Stir until creamy and smooth. Cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally.

Beat cream cheese in very large bowl until smooth. Gradually beat in butter. Beat in vanilla and cooled white chocolate in stages. Add only enough gel base color in rice-size drops - beating to blend after each addition - to turn frosting pale pink.

Assembly

Put your largest layer on cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil.

Using long serrated knife, cut 12-inch cake horizontally into 3 equal layers and remove the top two layers, one at a time, to your counter-top to get them out of the way.

Spread 2/3 cup apricot or raspberry preserves over the bottom-most cake layer (the one still on the cardboard), leaving 1/2-inch border at edge. Spoon 2 cups frosting over the preserves and spread gently.

Use something flat (like a tart pan bottom) to help you slide the next cake layer onto the bottom layer. Spread a layer of preserves and then frosting. Top with third cake layer, cut side down.

Spread 2 2/3 cups frosting smoothly over top and sides of cake; refrigerate on cardboard base.

Repeat those steps for your middle layer and top layer. Chill the three assembled layers until firm, at least 2 hours.

Instructions for making and applying a fondant covering and final assembly.