more re: cake
So when I said that my next cake would be a hot milk cake with caramel frosting, I somehow was totally lying. This morning, I made a vanilla layer cake, filled it with home-made lemon curd, and then covered it with home-made lime buttercream frosting.
I'll try to make another one to actually bring into work on Monday. Would've brought in today's cake, but one of the layers cracked, so it's now a tester cake. The lime buttercream is scrumdiddlyumptious. So is the lemon curd; however, I ended up cooking that on a higher heat than I'd intended, so I'll have to make another batch and see if it comes out even better.
As for the cake part of things--I like this recipe. It's good and basic. Not too many ingredients or a very involved prep. The only weirdness is that it calls for shortening rather than butter. Not sure what difference that makes flavor- or texture-wise. But whatever.
The cake layers were very flat on top, no trimming needed. I'm not sure if this is because I shook the pans a bit before putting them in the oven, so the batter spread out more evenly, or if it's because the cakes are undercooked a bit, so didn't rise to their full potential. (I'm always worried about overcooking cake, so may have pulled these out of the oven a bit early. Plus, the cooking time of the recipe was calibrated for 9" cake pans and I used 8", because I only have one 9" cake pan.*) Will do a taste test to see which possibility is more likely, and then the next batch will tell the tale.
In other news, remnants of Frankencake still live in my fridge. Dad's been eating him up, slowly by slowly. He finds it tasty, if hard to cut. (The fudge frosting that wasn't got candy-hard.)
So I've got a cake and a half in my house. And will try to make another lemon-lime cake over the weekend to bring in on Monday (pending taste-test, of course, since this all could turn out to have been a very bad idea, flavor-wise**). Hm. It's a good thing this is a smaller cake. If I have leftovers, I might have a problem. (And since I'm now remembering that we may not have a storyteller's meeting next Monday, I can already anticipate having a problem, due to not having a backup group of ravenous college kids to foist more cake on.)
Anyway. That's my morning so far. I woke up, looked at the clock, saw that it was 4:00am, and decided to bake.
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* And please let's not get started about how I have trouble finding even the things I know I do have in my kitchen. I am at the moment assuming that mom has "borrowed" my colander. I just wish I could remember what "safe place" I decided to stash the food scale in.
** But I had a sampling of Safeway cakes yesterday--their plain-jane chocolate and vanilla cakes--and they were unrelentingly sweet. There was no satisfaction in eating them. (I knew that already, actually, thus usually avoid these particular Safeway cakes, but it was a good reminder.) So even if the lemon-lime cake is a failure, I at least hope it's not got a boring one-note flavor to it. (An interesting failure would be further up the ladder to success, I guess.) I'm not perfectly sure how to create depth of flavor in a cake, but that seems an important thing to learn.
I'll try to make another one to actually bring into work on Monday. Would've brought in today's cake, but one of the layers cracked, so it's now a tester cake. The lime buttercream is scrumdiddlyumptious. So is the lemon curd; however, I ended up cooking that on a higher heat than I'd intended, so I'll have to make another batch and see if it comes out even better.
As for the cake part of things--I like this recipe. It's good and basic. Not too many ingredients or a very involved prep. The only weirdness is that it calls for shortening rather than butter. Not sure what difference that makes flavor- or texture-wise. But whatever.
The cake layers were very flat on top, no trimming needed. I'm not sure if this is because I shook the pans a bit before putting them in the oven, so the batter spread out more evenly, or if it's because the cakes are undercooked a bit, so didn't rise to their full potential. (I'm always worried about overcooking cake, so may have pulled these out of the oven a bit early. Plus, the cooking time of the recipe was calibrated for 9" cake pans and I used 8", because I only have one 9" cake pan.*) Will do a taste test to see which possibility is more likely, and then the next batch will tell the tale.
In other news, remnants of Frankencake still live in my fridge. Dad's been eating him up, slowly by slowly. He finds it tasty, if hard to cut. (The fudge frosting that wasn't got candy-hard.)
So I've got a cake and a half in my house. And will try to make another lemon-lime cake over the weekend to bring in on Monday (pending taste-test, of course, since this all could turn out to have been a very bad idea, flavor-wise**). Hm. It's a good thing this is a smaller cake. If I have leftovers, I might have a problem. (And since I'm now remembering that we may not have a storyteller's meeting next Monday, I can already anticipate having a problem, due to not having a backup group of ravenous college kids to foist more cake on.)
Anyway. That's my morning so far. I woke up, looked at the clock, saw that it was 4:00am, and decided to bake.
~~~~
* And please let's not get started about how I have trouble finding even the things I know I do have in my kitchen. I am at the moment assuming that mom has "borrowed" my colander. I just wish I could remember what "safe place" I decided to stash the food scale in.
** But I had a sampling of Safeway cakes yesterday--their plain-jane chocolate and vanilla cakes--and they were unrelentingly sweet. There was no satisfaction in eating them. (I knew that already, actually, thus usually avoid these particular Safeway cakes, but it was a good reminder.) So even if the lemon-lime cake is a failure, I at least hope it's not got a boring one-note flavor to it. (An interesting failure would be further up the ladder to success, I guess.) I'm not perfectly sure how to create depth of flavor in a cake, but that seems an important thing to learn.