Vanilla Buttercake with Cream Cheese Frosting - Double Tier!
One thing off my goal list for 2016 - try baking a tiered cake with frosting!
I've always wanted to try it after watching yummy baking videos by Laura Vitale etc. Where they use a cake stand that spins, and an angled spatula just for application of frosting. And the cake surface can turn into a smooth, beautiful, glossy chocolatey brown or vanilla white. Yum.
A perfect chance came up for me when Charlene requested a triple-tier cake for Selwyn's (my nephew) first birthday next month, and shared a recipe with me (keep them coming!). I decided to try a double-tier one for my test baking.
THIS IS IT:
It wasn't as tedious as I expected. The time-consuming (and fun) part is the frosting. After the baked layers are ready from two trays, I just use the frosting I made and 'glue' them together. It looks like a huge butter biscuit with that yummy creamy centre:
The rainbow specks you see all over the cake are from the rainbow sprinkles I mixed in the batter, for aesthetic purposes :D It makes the cake LOOK fun to eat! But the cake ended up being too sweet for many tasters. I probably wouldn't do that again.
After the 'glueing', I have to apply a first layer of frosting over the entire cake called the crumb coat. It's just like in painting, when you have to first paint a base layer of colour on the wall before painting over with a new coat!
The cake with the crumb coat gets chilled in the fridge for 2 hours, before new coats of frosting are applied over for smoothing. This was what I got after maybe about half an hour of working on the new coats:
Not too bad I must say (: I didn't expect it to look this smooth to be honest! It was hard work but fun at the same time.
Most people didn't enjoy the frosting (since my tasters were mostly physically active people who exercise regularly...I'm not surprised) and found it too sweet. Charlene liked it though - and she's the most important person to please! The people who'll be eating the cake will be my family and her family after all.
I didn't think much about my own creation - the taste was ordinary, not remarkable. I think the taste was below average for a cake. I'm not a fan of cream myself. Feedback was generally more negative this time. Too dense, too hard, too dry, too heavy. Maybe cake flour will make it lighter than all-purpose flour? Maybe I should have used cane sugar instead of brown sugar? Maybe my butter wasn't a good brand? Maybe I overbeat the mixture when adding flour and gluten was formed? So many factors!
I appreciated my cake only because of the effort I put into it. Preparation time from beginning till crumb coat application was about 2.5 hours.
I'll do a lemon batter for the actual party next month, so the sweetness won't be overpowering for most people. And I gotta improve on my frosting skills! Especially on that 'glue' between layers - it's almost non-existent in this version.
Baker beware when trying this; my version didn't turn out ideal.
Recipe from Alison Roman
Makes a double-tier 9-inch cake (recipe amounts are modified from a triple-tier recipe)
Ingredients
For vanilla cake:
2 & 2/3 cups all-purpose flour or cake flour
1 & 1/3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
2/3 tsp baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 & 1/3 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup unsalted butter (151g), room temperature
1 & 1/3 cups sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 & 2/3 large eggs
For frosting/buttercream:
300g cream cheese, room temperature
226g unsalted butter, room temperature
1 & 1/3 cups caster sugar
Pinch of kosher salt
Method
For vanilla cake:
1. Make enough space in your fridge for a double-tier cake. For a gauge, a space about 10 x 10 x 5 inches is enough. Preheat oven to 176C. Place one rack in the top third of the oven and one rack in the middle. You don't want to use the lowest rack else the bottom of the cake browns too quickly. Grease two 9-inch cake pans. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda together. Set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, combine the buttermilk, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract. Set aside.
4. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and light brown sugar using an electric mixer. Beat on high until pale brown, light and fluffy. There should be no visible lumps of brown sugar - crush any with a spatula. Takes about 4 minutes.
5. Add in the eggs one at a time, beating in between additions. Beat until batter almost doubles in volume, and becomes very fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl when needed. Takes about 5 minutes.
6. With mixer on low, gently beat 1/3 of the flour mixture. Before fully combined, add 1/2 of buttermilk mixture. Repeat with remaining flour and buttermilk until everything is well-blended and no lumps remain. Don't overmix the batter - overmixing works the flour which develops gluten, making the cake rubbery and domed.
7. (Optional) Combine 1/4 cup rainbow sprinkles with 1 tbsp flour. Mix them into the batter. The flour will coat the sprinkles so that they float in your batter rather than sink to the bottom.
8. Divide the batter into two cake pans. Bake 35-40 minutes, switching the pans between the top and middle rack halfway through baking 'so they all get even oven love'. When cakes are a golden brown, pull slightly away from the sides of the pan, and the top springs back slightly when pressed, they're done.
9. Remove from oven and invert onto a cooling rack.
For frosting:
1. In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, butter, and salt. Beat on high until blended, light, and creamy. About 4 minutes.
2. With mixer on low, add 2 cups powdered sugar. Once incorporated, beat on high until no lumps. Should be very white and fluffy. About 5 minutes.
- Once cakes are cooled, use a normal or angled spatula to spread frosting onto the first layer of cake (bottom side up for a neater-shaped cake). Place the other cake over, bottom side up too. Apply a thin layer of frosting all over the cake. Make sure the whole cake is covered. This is the crumb coat or base layer, so it will look messy. That's fine.
- Chill the cake for 2 hours, but leave the frosting in room temperature.
- Remove the cake from the fridge and apply a new coat of frosting, doing any decorative patterns or swirls to your liking. Decorate the cake with sprinkles to your liking (:
