I've been itching to make Martha's Ruffle Tower cake for ages... but making a ruffle-y cake for my boys never seemed quite right. Of course, now we have a baby girl and making a pink, ruffle cake for her seems just right.
I followed Martha's cake recipe to a tee and it turned out a beautiful, lemony, buttermilk cake. (Had to increase the baking time to an hour and a quarter since I made one large cake, instead of 3 small ones).
Used my frozen egg whites to make the swiss meringue buttercream, but tried to modify the recipe to be less buttery and accomodate my beautiful, blended and strained beet juice.
Can't say that this worked that well since it made the buttercream too watery and I needed to add some icing sugar, which consequently made the icing too sweet for my tastes. And even with the extra icing sugar, the buttercream wasn't quite the right consistency to make nice, stiff ruffles; so my ruffle cake is a Dali-esque melting cake. (Next time I'll probably use seven minute frosting or flour frosting os that the icing keeps its fluffiness after the beet juice is added... will post when I get some results).
The sweetness didn't seem to bother the birthday girl though...
... who dug in with relish...
Ahh... Little girls and their cute headbands - making that headband is what distracted me from spending proper time on her cake. More on the headband next....
Try using Rose Beranbaum (Cake Bible) Mousseline buttercream recipe. I find I can add quite a bit of liquid with out it failing on me. You can always get a bowl of ice water and chill the bowl of butter cream and then re-whip it for a better consistency. Also, I will make the full batch of the boiled sugar syrup but will not add the full amount...about 3/4 just to lighten the sweetness. If you need the recipe I will send it to you! ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks Chiho! I think I will try that next time. Maybe I'll have to make some cupcakes to try it out :)
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