This is the cake I made for my friend Amy's birthday. I wanted to play around with the whole ombre fad that's been sweeping across all of cakedom recently, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! I was crunched for time, so the icing job was a little slapdash, but my method worked and I'm excited to try it again soon.
Here are five of the six shades I used to create the ombre look. I started out with a very lightly colored coffee buttercream (recipe to follow) and varied the shades by adding melted bittersweet chocolate and cocoa powder. This gave the darker shades a tiny bit of texture, which wasn't terribly noticeable but seemed like a bit of a shame given the superb smoothness of the Italian meringue buttercream.
Here's the method I used to ice the cake:
After I'd layered the two tiers, I did crumb coats with the plain coffee buttercream and refrigerated them. Then I started the ombre icing by using a very small palette knife to spread a fairly even ring of the deepest chocolate buttercream all the way around the base of the larger tier.
I continued with the second and third darkest colors, and iced the top with that same third color. Then I smoothed the layers together with a large palette knife.
Then I put the bottom tier in the fridge and did the same to the top tier with the three lighter colors. That tier went into the refrigerator and the larger came out for some chopstick stabilization. They're inserted, marked, removed, cut to size, and inserted again.
I placed the top on the bottom, secured with a little room temperature buttercream which glued the tiers together as it cooled and solidified.
I sprinkled some chocolate "crumb" on there for good measure (and also to hide the seam between the two tiers). The crumb also made an appearance inside the cake, but I'll get into that in a minute.
Then I gave the top a swirl and I was ready to go! Except that the cake was so tall it didn't fit in my cake carrier. So I just sort of draped the thing over the top and got a ride to the restaurant, and fixed it up with a little more crumb once I got to the party.
RIP adorable swirl... you were too beautiful for this world!The crumb is a mixture of flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt and a little cornstarch mixed together, bound with butter and baked for a bit. It's basically a shortcut for making cookie crumbs, although it's got a bit more of a sandy texture. These preparations are also called "soils," which I thought was appropriate as Amy is an archaeologist.
Mmmm, soil.I added the crumb to the layers of coffee buttercream inside the cake, like this:
But the coffee buttercream wasn't the only filling; I also made caramel and mixed it into some buttercream to make a delicious butterscotchy filling. It turns out you can force and incredible amount of caramel into buttercream and still maintain a smooth yet sturdy consistency.
And here is the lovely Amy with her cake, ready to tuck in:
And here's a slice! From the bottom up it goes chocolate cake with coffee-n-cream simple syrup soak, thin layer of caramel buttercream, cake, thick layer of coffee buttercream with crumb, cake, caramel buttercream, cake, etc.
On to the recipes:
Light and Springy Chocolate Cake
Because the chocolate cake I made a few weeks ago came out so well, I decided to stick to the same basic recipe, tweaking just a little bit. The procedure is the same as last time, dries and wets mixed separately then combined, nothin' fancy, but I'll detail the process below.
I used an 8" round (3" high) and a 6" round (3" high), and had enough batter left over to make six extra-tall cupcakes (cupcake pan from Ikea).
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
2 1/2 cups white sugar
2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups plus 4 tablespoons cake flour
6 tablespoons buttermilk powder
3 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
4 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1 1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup sour cream
1 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Preheat your oven to 350•.
Grease your pans, line the bottoms with baking paper (like a boss), grease again and flour.
Chop the unsweetened chocolate and put in a bowl set over simmering water to melt. Set aside once melted.
Put the sugar, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and whisk together. I used my hands to work out the bigger chunks in the brown sugar.
In a separate, deeper bowl, whisk together the eggs, yolks, buttermilk, vegetable oil, and vanilla.
Add in the dry all at once and mix just until combined. Use your hands! Amazing.
Distribute the batter between the pans and bake until the cakes are done. I've stopped paying attention to the length of time I bake things; it always works better for me just to keep an eye on them, adjusting the temperature as I see fit and testing them with a sharp knife once their tops spring back when poked gently. These cakes took somewhere around 40 minutes, maybe a little longer.
A note on this particular cake: when it rises it does so very delicately so it is best not to test it with a knife until it springs back when poked in the very middle. If you spear it too early, you risk deflating the cake.
Let the cakes cool in their pans, refrigerate for a couple of hours for best results, run a knife around the sides and overturn to release. If you're having troubles getting the cake out, run some warm water over the bottom (being sure to keep your hand on the top of the overturned cake in case of sudden release).
Some notes of comparison between this cake and the last: this one has the same amount of chocolate in it as the other, but the consistency is lighter, the air pockets larger and the crumb springier. This consistency difference made the cake seem a bit less chocolatey, not a problem in this case because the chocolate doesn't outshine the coffee, it's muted flavor actually complimenting the combination very nicely. In any case, if you're looking for something with a denser chocolate cake, stick with the earlier recipe.
Here are the cupcakes: they baked up quickly and beautifully, like delicious chocolatey mushrooms...
Right? Mushrooms!And finally, because it came out so amazingly light and fluffy, here's the buttercream recipe I used. It's adapted from the vanilla buttercream recipe in the Miette cookbook, tweaked a bit, but it's basically your classic Italian meringue buttercream. A fair amount of effort, but for a result that is about a million times more silky and delicious than buttercreams that rely on powdered sugar. You'll end up with more than you need for the amount of cake the above recipe calls for, but better safe than sorry!
Coffee Italian Meringue Buttercream
2 lbs butter (eight sticks) at room temp
4 tablespoons instant coffee
2 2/3 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
7 egg whites
1 1/3 teaspoons cream of tartar
2 tablespoons vanilla
Beat the butter and instant coffee together at high speed until the coffee is totally incorporated and the butter is very light and fluffy, at least 10 minutes. Remove the butter from the bowl if it's the one you'll be using to make the meringue, and clean it very well, with soap. Any lingering fat may inhibit the development of a light and fluffy meringue, or so the lore goes.
Heat the water and sugar in a pan over medium low heat, stirring until the sugar melts. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan and cook the syrup until it reaches 240° F. As soon as it hits 240, start to whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar at high speed until they form soft peaks, keeping an eye on the boiling syrup. When the candy thermometer reaches 248°, remove the syrup from heat and, with the mixer on medium, slowly pour the syrup into the whites, being sure to avoid pouring it directly on the spinning whisk attachment to avoid splatter. Raise the speed to high and continue to whisk until the bowl is cool to the touch, at least 10 minutes.
Switching the mixing speed to medium-low, add the butter a quarter cup at a time, allowing each addition to be completely incorporated before adding more. Once it's all in there, add the vanilla, raise the speed and whip for another minute or so just to get it good and fluffy. At certain points it may look like it's deflating or curdling, but keep beating and it should come together and fluff up nicely.
Cool, that's about it!
Bake hard,
Azara
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