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Narrative, part one: Makin’

I don’t trust Joe LeCicero anymore.

He’s the author of Cake Decorating for Dummies. Now, I figure, given the likely target audience for the tome, I would—for no matter what recipe I tried in the book—end up with a simple, classic cake. The Brown Sugar cake sounded absolutely fascinating, especially in combo with the Milk Chocolate frosting, and I went for it.

A few notes about the recipe: 1 to 1 ratio of brown sugar to vegetable oil. Yes, fats = sugar. Ewww. Perhaps I should have stopped after noting this little oddity, but no, I figured that one should give the recipe the good ol’ college try and use the recipe to the T. Early on, I was dubious, as the oil and sugar proverbially did not mix, creating an appearance that prompts only inappropriate metaphors, which I shall pass enumerating.

I wasn’t happy.

Further mixing led to a more acceptable looking mixture.

After the oil scare, the mixture went swimmingly, including LeCicero's patented 4-part flour, 3-part liquid alternation method, and I was left with a decent looking, though overly sweet and somewhat thin, batter. It baked for an obscene amount of time (about 10 minutes over any other cake I’ve baked recently) and came out with cracked tops, some air pockets, and a slightly folded rim around the edges:

Clearly, I had tons of problems. I may have overmixed the batter. I don’t think I put too much batter in the pans (I think they were about half full). Also, either the oven temperature was too high, or I overbaked it, yet who would have wanted a cake soggy with oil? Gross. (Plus, I’m not won over on the Bake-Even strips, although my extra-tall pans might make them useless.)

Andrew and I promptly sampled the cracked portion, which was really disgusting. The oil, apparently, had been swimming for freedom, up and away, as the baking came to a close. At this impasse, I asked myself the classic Good Housekeeping phrase: Can this cake be saved? We could chuck it, hope it improved as it cooled, engineer a fixer-upper frosting tailored specifically to counteract the problems with the cake, or cut up the cake and douse it in bourbon sauce to call it bread pudding.

Ultimately, we decided to wait for the frosting/cake combo to judge. We left the cake in the fridge and went to see The Simpsons. Coming back, I torted the cake and prepped for frosting assembly. The kitchen was insane at this point (Andrew was making watermelon caviar, sour kiwi noodles, Marcel’s pineapple poi, and bubble sugar chips), and amid the chaos, I heard a crashing noise, only to turn around and see…

My turntable destroyed. Little Xs all over its face. Turns out I won’t really need a turntable for decoration after all—but that’ll come in a minute: for the moment, I was devastated. Wisely, Andrew pretended nothing happened and returned to work, therefore escaping the worst of my pissed-off-ness. Off to Walmart for a replacement (no way I would drive all the way to the craft store right then), after shrugging off Andrew’s cautious, polite advice to sit down and relax until after dinner.

Returned with the turntable, I did end up relaxing until an amazing dinner of olive-oil poached salmon, parmesan asparagus, and bread in dipping oil, ended by Andrew’s fresh fruit platter of the aforementioned goodies—which involved a rather fun foray into [http://www.starchefs.com/c_and_h/html/tips.html sugar pulling]. (Sometimes, my baking experiments come off better than [http://blindedbyscience.pilsch.com/ Andrew’s molecular gastronomy experiments], but tonight definitely went in the other direction.)

What I learned, part one: makin’

1. Oil does make for a moist cake, but you can easily get too much of a good thing (try to mix with butter)
2. Check the oven temperature! Check the oven temperature!
3. Don’t overmix the batter.
4. Trust your instinct about dubious recipes

Narrative, part two: frostin’

After the turntable disaster, I mixed the frosting (lots of cocoa, lots of butter). It was bitter and overly sweet—more cause for alarm. And, even though I’d doubled the batch, it didn’t make enough to cover the four layers I planned on having. In a fit of genius, I decided to use ganache as the frosting (the milk chocolate frosting as a filler).

For the first time, I filled a pastry bag with my filling and piped in with a coupler as a “tip.” The process went more quickly than I expected, and I’ll probably use the technique in the future. It produced almost perfectly even layers of frosting (although I have been able to produce them without piping too), and I was pleased with the effect. Also, I checked the cake’s levelness after each addition of frosting or cake layer, using extra gobs of frosting to correct sagging and my spatula to correct bulging. The rest was not perfect, but definitely my best effort as far as having a level cake is concerned:

The ganache decision prompted a whirlwind of comparison shopping for recipes. I looked in the Advanced Pastry Cook textbook, as well as CIA’s pastry textbook, Cake Decorating for Dummies, The Essential Guide to Cake Decorating (which is a beautiful book with sophisticated ideas and precise recipes), The Cake Doctor, and many websites, including Joseph Hall’s, Baking911, Epicurious, and all the usual suspects.

My composite recipe: 12 oz chocolate, 10 oz cream, 2 oz corn syrup, .75 oz butter. Liquids brought to boil, poured into chocolate, carefully whisked, etc. The recipe was pretty bitter, even with semisweet chocolate, and the butter resisted emulsifying, but it produced a wonderful consistency and glassy sheen. With bated breath, I poured the first layer (soon after mixing, as I took my sweet time whisking the emulsion together—so much so that it was pretty much cooled off by the time I dared to bring the mixing to a close!) It looked so cool I couldn’t stop, which was okay because I hadn’t poured enough at first.

The first layer was surprisingly sufficient. If I hadn’t kept playing with it, a second coat might not have been necessary. But I did play with it:

Look at that mirror shine:

I also fussed too much with the second layer and ended up with a few air bubbles on top. Next time, I’ll pop the suckers with a toothpick. I decorated the ganache with frozen buttercream transfers of little lavender blossoms, trimmed the cake board with the edge of a fork, and put it in the fridge. Ah! So simple, yet so trying.

The first slice was better than we had reason to expect. The cake was less dry, the frosting less sweet, and the ganache less bitter—when all taken in the same bite! Unfortunately, it didn’t age well, and the second day, it wasn’t quite as good.

To serve, I scattered extra buttercream blossoms around the plate. Pretty! Very country-springtime.

Redux: #Brown Sugar Cake—bust #Milk Chocolate Frosting—good if on an appropriate cake #Ganache—great for a quick topper (but use a lower % chocolate for Andrew next time) #Frozen Buttercream Transfers—wonderful, though picky

What I Learned, part two: frostin’

1. Be careful with the cocoa in frosting (too much = bitter frosting)
2. Use temperature to play with frosting consistency (warmer, softer; colder, harder)
3. Piping frosting in layers will yield very even frosting layers
4. Check cake’s levelness OFTEN: after each addition of frosting and each addition of cake layers. Adjust position of cake to match a thin part of one layer with a thick layer of another. Add lumps of frosting underneath sagging parts.
5. When covering with ganache, make sure the sides of the cake are as smooth as possible; add frosting to fill gaps. (Remember, the ganache “crumb coat” will prevent the frosting from ruining the ganache.)
6. Only add corn syrup to the ganache (the butter emulsified with difficulty)
7. With ganache, still do a crumb coat: Pour half on cake when it’s still warm; let refrigerate 20 minutes; pour rest on cake (should be thickened and a little cool)
8. Do not fuss with the ganache. Let the pouring do the work. Resist the urge to correct with a spatula (unless, of course, cake is showing through).
9. Use extreme caution when adding decorations to ganache. The smallest slip will mar the cake surface.
10. Use a toothpick to pierce air bubbles in ganache surface.
11. To add frozen buttercream decorations: 1) Pipe on waxed paper and place in freezer. 2) Freeze a metal spatula and metal cocktail pick. 3) Take decorations out of the freezer one by one on the spatula (don’t remove buttercream from freezer when still on waxed paper). 4) Lower spatula as far down as possible while feeling safe; gently push onto cake with cocktail pick. 5) To prevent them inverting, you may have to switch from pushing from nearer side of decoration to pushing towards cake from further side of decoration.
12. It really does pay to decorate the cake board. Next time, cover with pretty paper, wrapping paper, or tissue paper, then with cellophane.

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