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Thursday, September 1, 2011

More Cake Tasting!

Yes, it is true I have taken on making another 'wedding cake' for a dear friend.  I tested two new recipes over the weekend and had the bride and groom do a taste test to choose which one they liked best.  These were the choices.

Cake # 1
Lemon Cake with lemon curd, triple cream and grand-marnier buttercream icing.

The bad news was I am still getting used to my new oven and I pretty much over-baked both cakes!  Ugh, it was rather disappointing but what could I do.  The lemon cake was an egg based cake very similar to a chiffon cake, or at least was an attempt at chiffon, I have a feeling I over mixed the batter!  Then I made a cream filled with whipping cream and mascarpone.   The syrup was just sugar, lemon and water boiled down to create a syrup, I mixed it with the lemon curd and brushed the cake with that first before spreading the cream on.  As for the buttercream frosting, I made a standard buttercream meringue frosting and then added some grand marnier a some of the lemon syrup bringing a nice subtle flavor through it.

Cake #2
Vanilla Bean Cake with passion-fruit custard cream and swiss meringue buttercream icing.

The vanilla cake was my favorite even though it was also a little dry, for me a butter based cake always wins.  The passion-fruit custard cream was so good I think I could have eaten the whole bowl!  I brushed the cake with a passion fruit syrup first and then did the layer of custard.  For the tester cake I did four layers which was probably a bit too high, I also made it square which I have now realized makes icing the cake incredibly difficult.


The final cake will be round with three layers I hope.  And after much analysis we decided to try and merge the concepts.  So the goal is to give the vanilla cake some lemon zing and stuff it with the lemon curd and rather than a passion fruit custard fill it with vanilla custard cream and do the same grand marnier buttercream frosting.  The wedding is in October so I still have a bit of time to practice!

Here are some smaller versions I did with the extra cake batter for a friend's morning tea.  So yummy!

1 comments:

Thora and Dean said...

That new combination sounds good! I'll be happy to test more for you :) as will the rest of my fam. When I told my Dad I had a "leila cake" he was very happy! Direct quote "oh good, well that won't be your standard packet type cake then" And Dean asked for more. Winner!!

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