Baking Class Sixteen: Cake Assembly

After all of the cake baking the day before, we finally got to play at Ace of Cakes and assemble our cakes. The yellow cake got the Italian buttercream treatment while the Genoise was filled with raspberry jam and Italian meringue.

Yellow Cake with Italian Buttercream

Take the cake and slice it in half. It’s a lot less tricky than it sounds. Score the cake all the way around and then just ease your serrated knife in to the cake. This way, you only go halfway through the cake.

A cake divided against itself cannot stand. Well, it can stand, but it needs some frosting help.

Next, whip up the buttercream so it’s not a huge, cold block. You want to get the creamy texture you had it the night before. (Of course, if you whip it up the same day, you won’t have this problem.)

Whipping the buttercream so it's no longer hard.

Now, cut side up, frost the top of the first layer. Then, put the cut side up of the other half and press down. Add a crumb coat to the cake. Next, add the rest of the frosting to form the final coat.

This is after the crumb coat of buttercream.

I saved some of my buttercream and added cocoa powder to it. I used this chocolate buttercream to pipe the edges. Pretty good for a first try, right?

Check out the pipes on this one!

Genoise with Italian Meringue

My Genoise was really thin, but I was still able to slice it in half. We followed the same procedure as above but instead of buttercream, we used the raspberry goo from the bucket for the middle. You want to moisten the cake with syrup first because the Genoise is a pretty dry cake. So, slice, moisten, jam, press, moisten top.

Thin, but scored in half...awaiting jam and meringue.

Then, we whipped up some meringue.

Making meringue--Italian style

Italian Meringue Formula

Sugar	1 lb
Water	4 oz
Egg whites	8 oz

Heat the sugar and water in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves and the mixture boils. Boil until you have the mixture between the soft and hard ball stage. DO NOT let it get brown. While the syrup is cooking, beat the egg whites with a whip until they form soft peaks. With the machine running, slowly whip in the hot syrup. Continue beating until the meringue is cool and forms firm peaks. This should sound familiar as it’s the first step for Italian buttercream.

Once you have your meringue, gently ice the cake just like above.

Before the blowtorch and crazy piping, this is what an Italian meringue looks like.

Pipe a design into the top and or sides. (I couldn’t think of anything so you’ll see me getting goofy in the picture below. I blame the copious amounts of sugar that have building up in my system over the course of the quarter.)

Then, take a blowtorch to the entire thing and brown the heck out of it. Woo hoo!

I admit, not the most professional of cakes.

 

Formulas from the fifth edition of “Professional Baking” by Wayne Gisslen.

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