Aqua and Red Class White on White Buttermilk Cake with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Buttercream
This isn’t getting old for me yet. What about you?
We’re only 2 in, but it will be over soon.
I don’t really know which cake won second place. It may have been the Strawberry Cake for the Pink Class, but I already posted that recipe so I’ll just give you the link here along with a picture of the cake. I think it was the prettiest one.
If it wasn’t the Strawberry Cake, it was probably the Aqua/Red Cake, which I keep calling vanilla, but was actually called a White on White Buttermilk Cake from The Pastry Queen cookbook. My friend Jessica who is a pastry chef and who has actual cake making experience has used this recipe for wedding cakes before. She told me that it bakes very evenly so that I wouldn’t have to do a lot of trimming to make the top flat before I started icing. She was right. It did bake super flat.
I bought some Even Bake strips for the cakes before I started this whole thing. They are these neat little strips that you pin around the outside of your cake pan before you bake the cake, and it helps the cakes to bake really flat and even and leave off the dome that typically happens in cake layers that makes stacking and icing the cakes really annoying. I bought them and forgot to use them for this cake, and it still baked very evenly. I could tell though that the rest of the recipes would not have baked so evenly without the strips. They worked remarkably well.
The icing that I used was probably what really made the cake good. It was a White Chocolate Cream Cheese Buttercream from The Cake Bible. This was the last cake that I iced, and the recipe didn’t produce nearly as much buttercream as I needed, so since it was after midnight the night before the big event I improvised. Instead of using icing in between layers of the cake I used seedless strawberry jam. I figured, “I like white chocolate and strawberries, this will have to be good”. It worked out really well, giving the cake an extra fun bit of flavor, and sitting in strawberry jam overnight made the cake more moist, which was nice.
White-on-White Buttermilk Cake from The Pastry Queen
Serves 12-14
Ingredients
1.5 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 1/3 cups sugar
3 large egg whites
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups cake flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
1.5 cups buttermilk
Directions:
Place one baking rack one-third from the bottom of the oven and the second two-thirds from the bottom. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line three 9-inch cake pans with parchment paper rounds, grease and butter and dust with flour.
Using a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl on medium speed for about 2 minutes, until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides and beat on medium speed for about 1 minute. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder in a medium bowl. Add about one-third of the flour mixture to the batter and beat on medium speed until incorporated. Add about half of the buttermilk and beat on medium speed until incorporated. Continue adding dry and wet ingredients alternately, scraping the bowl down and beating until incorporated after each addition. End with the dry ingredients. The batter will be thick and glossy.
Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared cake pans. Stagger the cake layers on the oven racks so that no layer is directly over another. Set two layers on one rack and the third on the other. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cakes comes out clean and the tops are flat and browned. Monitor the layers carefully for doneness; each one may be done at a different time.
Set the cake pans on racks to cool for 10 minutes. Invert the cakes onto the racks and cool completely before frosting. At this point the cakes can be tightly rapped in a layer of plastic wrap and a layer of aluminum foil and frozen up to 3 weeks.
White Chocolate Cream Cheese Buttercream from The Cake Bible
Makes 4 3/4 cups
Ingredients
9 ounces of high quality white chocolate
12 ounces softened cream cheese
3/4 cup unsalted butter (softened)
1.5 tablespoons lemon juice
Directions
Break the chocolate into squares and place in the top of a double boiler set over very hot water (no hotter than 160 degrees F) on low heat. The water must not touch the bottom of the double boiler insert.
Remove the double boiler from the heat and stir until the chocolate begins to melt. Return to the heat if the water cools, but be careful that it does not get too hot. Stir 10 minutes or until smooth. Allow to cool.
In a mixing bowl beat the cream cheese (preferably with a flat beater) until smooth and creamy. Gradually beat in the cooled chocolate until smoothly incorporated. Beat to ensure smoothness before frosting.
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