Suicide Buttercream

This week we made the White Chocolate Whisper Cake (pg 50). She turns this one into the Blueberry Swan Lake cake (pg 165).

This is the perfect time to take a minute and thank Janet. She not only made the Blueberry Lake, she also made the aforementioned swans. And as you can tell in the pics, she did a mighty fine job of it. It required a Classic Lemon Buttercream, which decorated the cake. Again, kudos to J. Look at the sides of that cake. It was mighty fine. You run the spatula in vertical lines -- simple, but completely effective.

Really, this cake came together like that -- only because of J's two days of intensive swan making. (It was much simpler than that.-J)

And when we put the cake in the oven, I asked Janet, "Well, how many more do we have in this blankety-blank chapter?"

Thumbing through the pages she says, "Two." She got that gleem in her eye, the one that I love so much and she asked, "Wanna do another one?"

My response was, "Oh, what the hell." And we both set out to gather up the mise en place for the second to last cake in our butter cake section. The Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter Cake (pg 54) requires some sort of buttercream -- don't they all.

In High school, we'd drink "suicides" I'm sure that's not really politically correct, but you'd add all the different sodas to the glass and drink it. Recently, I've found myself doing just that sort of thing at the movies. I really like Diet Cherry Coke and it's never available at the fountain machine. So, I create my own with 1/2 Diet Coke and 1/2 Cherry Coke. It works for the taste and I don't get too much sugar, but boy do I get the same amount of caffeine.

Ok, where was I? Right. Suicide Buttercream. RLB suggests any buttercream for the Perfect All-American. Remember last time when I said leftovers can be your friend? They sure can be. There were three buttercreams left in the freezer: 1. Orange Curd Buttercream written about on 07.25.07; 2. Vanilla Buttercream- the silky meringue one that was half creme anglais, from some cake we baked and 3. One we couldn't identify after much trying, but it must have been the first one we made. Anyway, they whipped up so perfectly that we both took a small moment to stare at them: perfect consistency. Best of all, they tasted great together.

The swan cake was nice to look at, and delightful to hold....I liked the mix of lemon, blueberries and cake, but for me the cake didn't have the ummph that I'd have wanted. It was nice, but not Wow!

The chocolate cake had a good crumb, but a ton of holes in it. It looked like a chunk of brown, rich, dark chocolate brown, swiss cheese. Overmixing I guess... it's suspicious that the chocolate cakes tend to have this difficulty. The best part of it was the buttercream. We'll never be able to make that again (Was that 1/16 of a vanilla buttercream + 1/4 orange curd buttercream + a random amount of an undisclosed buttercream whisked together until it looks right then slathered on?) The combination of vanilla and orange with Grand Marnier is one that we will work to recreate though. It was fantastic with the chocolate.





As you can tell, J and I are just about over the butter cakes. And, just about done with them, thank our lucky stars. The next cake is also the last one in the chapter -- The Checkerboard Cake.

Honestly, we can't wait for this one.

Bake through everyone....

Robb