All-Occasion Downy Yellow Butter Cake - Take 2

I couldn't imagine our girls' weekend in the Cities without cake, so I had to regroup and take another shot at this recipe. I hurried home from the K of C fish fry (excellent meal, by the way) to whip it together.

I'm getting comfortable with Rose Levy Beranbaum's directions for making a cake from scratch. Just as with the White Velvet cake, the batter was delicious even before baking. I had to be very disciplined to get as much into the pans as possible, and not leave a lot on the beaters.

On Thursday, I had noticed that dividing the batter between two 8" pans would work as they weren't more than 2/3 full. That is what I did on Friday night. There was 20 oz. of batter in each pan. Unfortunately, this was too much batter, and the cakes baked for 50 minutes before the center was done. They also rose about 1/4" over the tops of the pans. The tops were overdone, and the cake was a bit too dry because of the overbaking.

For the Mousseline Buttercream, I used Chambord Black Raspberry Liqueur instead of Gran Gala Orange that I used last week. I liked the flavor of the Chambord better than the Gran Gala. The only drawback is that because the liqueur is so dark, the icing had a slight lavender tinge to it.

On to the taste test.

After we saw Footloose at the Chanhassen Dinner Theater, we headed back to the hotel and took the cake out of the refrigerator. We let it sit for approximately 20 minutes so that it wasn't so cold. Everyone liked the cake; however, none of them had tasted last week's White Velvet cake, so it wasn't a scientific taste test. (Yes, Jenn; I'm admitting that you were right and that the I.M. team should taste all of my cakes before anyone else!) I have had both cakes and in my opinion, the yellow cake was a bit drier than the white, which could be attributed to the fact that it was baked longer.

Test Cake #2 - All-Occasioin Downy Yellow Butter Cake

Spent the day in Bloomington in meetings, arriving home around 8 pm. Since I'm heading to Chanhassen early Saturday for a girls' weekend, I wanted to bake the cake tonight and ice it tomorrow after work.

This cake went together very smoothly. I had separated the eggs last night and put them in the refrigerator, so that eliminated a little bit of time. I'm not sure if this batter was denser (more dense?) than the White Velvet cake, but I only used the two 8" pans. Dividing the batter into two (approximately 19 oz. each), the pans were only slightly more than half full, so I thought this would be fine. I skipped the 6" pan.

NOTE TO SELF: If you notice leftover grease on the bottom of the oven from the baked pasta, it is best to clean it up before attempting to use the oven; otherwise you end up with a grease fire in the oven......

Scratch the idea of taking a cake to Chanhassen.

Test Cake #1 - White Velvet Butter Cake w/ Mousseline Buttercream with Gran Gala Orange Liqueur

My first test cake - Sunday, February 21, 2010

White Velvet Butter Cake: The recipe was for two 9" layers. My 9" cake pans are packed away in the garage, so I made two 8" layers and one 6".

Each 8" layer had 13.5 oz. of batter and baked for 24 minutes. The 6" layer had 10 oz. of batter and baked for 32 minutes.

For the icing, I made Mousseline Buttercream with Gran Gala Orange Liqueur. It was delicious!

 

The 6" cake was an at-home sample. Terry took one bite and proclaimed his praise! That's pretty good since usually he isn't forthcoming with his praise of sample recipes. When I ask him if they taste ok, his reply is "Of course." I am considering this cake to be quite a success since he actually offered a compliment! Bret commented that he thought the icing had an alcohol-aftertaste.

The 8" cake went to work for an Integrated Marketing taste test. Putting it in the fridge for a few minutes firmed up the icing so that I could cover it with Press-n-Seal. Terry took it in on Sunday night and put it in the Test Kitchen's walk-in cooler. I took it out of the cooker about half an hour before we cut it. The texture of the icing was slightly firm. It didn't take long before the icing was very soft. The team ate about 2/3 of the cake on Monday. I put the cake back into the cooler to save for Tuesday. Everyone said that they liked it. Jenn was worried about the icing since she knew exactly what Bret meant when describing the alcohol aftertaste; however, she didn't notice one at all. She just noticed the hint of orange.

On Tuesday, I brought the cake downstairs and immediately cut it so that Wendi could have a piece. The cake definitely needs to warm up before cutting. The icing was too hard right out of the cooler. Jenn thought that it was almost too buttery when it was so chilled. Wendi took the last piece home to Kelly who is recuperating from having his gall bladder removed yesterday. I'm anxious to hear his thoughts.

Summary

This was an excellent cake and icing combination. It is important to remember that cakes with this icing cannot be cut right after removing from the cooler.

My cake quest history

I started baking cakes when we were living in Des Moines in the early '90s after taking a Wilton decorating class. I only use Betty Crocker cake mix and a shortening/powdered sugar icing recipe. My cakes do taste pretty good, based on the comments I get as well as the requests to bake cakes for people.

When I started taking classes a few years ago, I knew that I had to give something up. Baking cakes was what had to go.

I'm ready to get back into the baking world, only now I want to try my hand at scratch-cakes and "real" buttercream icing. Brittany - one of my daughter's friends since we moved to Marshall in 1995 - and Mat are getting married in October, and Terry suggested that "we" make the wedding cake for our gift to them. I've owned Rose Levy Beranbaum's book, The Cake Bible for years, but haven't seriously tried any of the recipes. This time around, I'm getting serious and I'm going to find the perfect cake for Mat and Brittany's wedding!