St. Therese’s feast day

I baked a cake for St. Therese’s feast day, to bring to General Assembly at All Saints. It’s just a plain white cake with butter frosting and raspberry-almond filling. I took this from The Best Recipe.

For the cake:

1 cup milk at room temp.
1/4 cup egg whites at room temp.
2 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
12 tbsp (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

For the butter frosting:

1/2 lb. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softenend
1 lb (4 cups) confectioners’ sugar
1 tbsp vanilla
1 tbsp milk
a pinch of salt
food coloring (optional)

For the raspberry-almond filling:

1/2 cup coarsely chopped almonds
raspberry jam

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 9 x 1 1/2 -inch round cake pans. Line the bottoms with parchment paper, grease again, and flour the pans. Shake/tap out any excess flour.

In a glass measuring cup (at least 2-cup measure), mix milk, egg whites, almond extract, and vanilla with a fork until well blended. (see comments)

In an electric mixer, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add the butter, and beat until it looks like moist crumbs, and no more big chunks of powdery ingredients remain.

Pour in all except 1/2 cup of the milk mixture, and beat at medium speed for a minute and a half. Add the rest of the milk mixture, and beat for 30 more seconds. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl, then beat for 20 more seconds. (see comments)

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cake pans. (see comments) Level the batter with a spatula.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let the cakes cool in their pans for at least 3 minutes before loosening the sides from the pans with a knife, and inverting onto a rack. Reinvert onto another rack and let cool completely, at least 1 1/2 hours. (see comments)

Prepare the frosting: Beat the butter, confectioners’ sugar, vanilla, milk, salt, and if desired, the coloring, at the lowest speed of an electric mixer, to prevent the sugar from creating a cloud. Once the sugar is sufficently moistened, increase the speed of the mixer, and beat, stopping twice to scrape down the sides, until the icing is fluffy, which should take about 1 1/2 minutes. Be careful not to overbeat, or the frosting will be too soft to pipe.

Combine 1/2 cup frosting with the almonds.

Prepare the cake for frosting. Stick the doily to the cake plate, and in turn the cake to the doily, with a dab of frosting in the center. Make sure to put rectangles of foil underneath the edges of the cake, so that no frosting gets on the doily. Spread the frosting with almonds over the first layer, making sure that it is level. Spread jam on top of this, again, making sure that it is level, before laying the second layer on top of the jam. Ice the rest of the cake. There should be some icing left over, which you can pipe onto the cake as you please. I used it to make a basket weave and lettering on the top.

Comments:

If you forget to bring the milk and eggs to room temp. before mixing them, you can set the bottom of the glass measuring cup in a container of hot water and stir the mixture for a bit, so that glass feels cool rather than cold.

You don’t have to be incredibly precise about the seconds, to the point where you set the timer with each step. Just count carefully, as we’ve all been taught

The batter of this cake, is very much like the batter of the last cake I blogged about; in other words, it is not a runny batter. It is very much like soft-serve ice cream. This explains the need to level it with a spatula.

The cake layers can be wrapped in plastic wrap and stored in the fridge for up to one day. Once assembled, it will remain fresh for a few days, stored in the fridge, and covered with a cake cover or inverted bowl (heck of a big bowl! but that part, I’m just quoting from the book). Anyway, for me, the cake kept under its cake cover (not huge bowl… ) for almost a week at room temp. but though I thought that was fine, I’d advise you to follow the book for the best results; aka fridge.

I have not included instructions for making the white roses on the cake, simply because I made those in a hurry, and I didn’t really do them right…

The cake was very much like pound cake; in other words, it wasn’t light and airy. I think the cake itself was delicious, but while the icing still beat the too-sweet store-bought, there’s definitely room for improvement. So, I’d say the cake gets a 9.5 (I’m still not convinced that it’s perfect), and the icing… 5. The frosting on the chocolate cake still beat.

I only took pictures of the finished cake; I was up baking until around midnight, so I’m really sorry that I didn’t bother taking pictures. This one didn’t go quite as fast as the chocolate cake, so I daresay I had a bit more than I should have, but that’s ok…