This week's assignment for Baked Sunday Mornings is the "Boston Cream Pie Cake" -- a recipe with a name that is simultaneously both redundant (since a "Boston cream pie" is by definition a cake) and clarifying (since the "pie" part of the title might otherwise be misleading to someone who doesn't know that a Boston cream pie isn't actually a pie). The "Boston cream" formulation of a cake or doughnut with cream filling and chocolate frosting is so iconic that once when I was at a doughnut shop in Guadalajara, Mexico, I made a point of trying to describe -- in Spanish -- to the man behind the counter that I wanted the doughnut with cream filling and chocolate frosting, and he looked at me in confusion and said -- in English -- "Boston cream?"
The Baked boys have put a small twist on this classic, by adding some chocolate filling to the traditional vanilla filling. The recipe is intended to make a four layer cake, filled with alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla pastry cream filling, and topped with chocolate glaze. The cake is a hot milk sponge, made by whipping together eggs, sugar, and vanilla, folding in sifted dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, salt), and then incorporating a mixture of milk and butter that have been heated until the butter melts.
You divide the batter into two 8-inch cake pans and bake. Whenever I make layer cakes, I always weigh the pans before baking to make sure that I have divided the batter equally between the pans. So I know that I had precisely the same amount of batter in my two pans (well, plus or minus 5 grams, since my scale only measures in 5-gram increments). I must not have done a good job mixing the batter, because one of my cakes rose about 50% higher than the other one. Also, on the bottom of the short cake, there was a small milky layer (probably about 3mm) that looked like it didn't have enough flour incorporated into it, and I had to trim it off. You are supposed to divide each cake in half to create four layers for the final cake. I ended up splitting my tall cake into two layers, and trimming my short cake to match the height of the other two split layers -- so I only ended up only with a three-layer cake instead of four layers.
You have to make the vanilla and chocolate pastry creams in advance of making the cake, since they need to be refrigerated for at least four hours before using them. You make the vanilla pastry cream from egg yolks, sugar, salt, cornstarch, butter, and vanilla (you are supposed to add rum as well, but I skipped it). To make the chocolate pastry cream, you just mix melted dark chocolate into a portion of the vanilla cream. My pastry cream was very thick and set up quite firm almost immediately. After refrigerating it overnight, it kept the shape of the bowl it was in, and I had to whisk it pretty vigorously to get it to a spreading consistency. I'm not sure if adding the rum might have helped maintain a creamier texture, but at least the cream was so thick that I didn't have to worry about the it leaking out of the sides of the cake.
The chocolate glaze for the top of the cake is made from dark chocolate, cocoa powder, corn syrup, sugar, cream, salt, vanilla, and butter. My glaze set up quite nicely, such that it kept the shape of the design I swirled into the top. You are supposed to spread the glaze to the edges of the cake so that it drips down the sides, but mine was so thick that it was hard to get it to go down the sides. In retrospect, I wish I had just covered the top and forgotten about the sides.
By the time I finally got around to assembling the cake, I wasn't feeling particularly optimistic about it -- after all, I had clearly done something wrong mixing the sponge cake batter, and I was missing a whole layer. However, I was pleasantly surprised that this cake was pretty darn tasty. While the sponge cake was moist and had a nice tight crumb, it didn't have much flavor. Nonetheless, when eaten with the vanilla and chocolate pastry creams and chocolate glaze, the cake overall was delicious and very favorably received. The one thing I would change is to use a sweeter chocolate for the glaze. I used Ghiradelli 72% for both the pastry cream and glaze (the recipe specifies 60%-72%), and I thought that the glaze was a bit on the bitter side.
I would like to try making this cake again to see if I could actually get four cake layers and smoother pastry cream. But I was happy with my cake, even with all of its imperfections!
Recipe: "Boston Cream Pie Cake," from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.
The Baked boys have put a small twist on this classic, by adding some chocolate filling to the traditional vanilla filling. The recipe is intended to make a four layer cake, filled with alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla pastry cream filling, and topped with chocolate glaze. The cake is a hot milk sponge, made by whipping together eggs, sugar, and vanilla, folding in sifted dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, salt), and then incorporating a mixture of milk and butter that have been heated until the butter melts.
You divide the batter into two 8-inch cake pans and bake. Whenever I make layer cakes, I always weigh the pans before baking to make sure that I have divided the batter equally between the pans. So I know that I had precisely the same amount of batter in my two pans (well, plus or minus 5 grams, since my scale only measures in 5-gram increments). I must not have done a good job mixing the batter, because one of my cakes rose about 50% higher than the other one. Also, on the bottom of the short cake, there was a small milky layer (probably about 3mm) that looked like it didn't have enough flour incorporated into it, and I had to trim it off. You are supposed to divide each cake in half to create four layers for the final cake. I ended up splitting my tall cake into two layers, and trimming my short cake to match the height of the other two split layers -- so I only ended up only with a three-layer cake instead of four layers.
The chocolate glaze for the top of the cake is made from dark chocolate, cocoa powder, corn syrup, sugar, cream, salt, vanilla, and butter. My glaze set up quite nicely, such that it kept the shape of the design I swirled into the top. You are supposed to spread the glaze to the edges of the cake so that it drips down the sides, but mine was so thick that it was hard to get it to go down the sides. In retrospect, I wish I had just covered the top and forgotten about the sides.
By the time I finally got around to assembling the cake, I wasn't feeling particularly optimistic about it -- after all, I had clearly done something wrong mixing the sponge cake batter, and I was missing a whole layer. However, I was pleasantly surprised that this cake was pretty darn tasty. While the sponge cake was moist and had a nice tight crumb, it didn't have much flavor. Nonetheless, when eaten with the vanilla and chocolate pastry creams and chocolate glaze, the cake overall was delicious and very favorably received. The one thing I would change is to use a sweeter chocolate for the glaze. I used Ghiradelli 72% for both the pastry cream and glaze (the recipe specifies 60%-72%), and I thought that the glaze was a bit on the bitter side.
I would like to try making this cake again to see if I could actually get four cake layers and smoother pastry cream. But I was happy with my cake, even with all of its imperfections!
Recipe: "Boston Cream Pie Cake," from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.
Comments
My finished product looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.