Baked Sunday Mornings: Wintermint Cake

I made two layer cakes from Baked Occasions for our holiday party this year: the Wintermint Cake and the Tricolor Cake. I'll blog about the Tricolor Cake later, whenever it comes up on the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule (spoiler: the cake is so good that I can't wait to make it again!). I almost completely missed the boat on blogging about the Wintermint Cake. In the wee hours of the morning after our holiday party, my husband and I were getting ready to finally go to bed around 2:00 a.m., when I realized that I had forgotten to take any pictures of the Wintermint Cake or taste it.

Of course, I already knew how the Wintermint Cake tastes. The chocolate cake is the exact same classic chocolate cake recipe used in the Baked chocolate coffee cake, the sweet and salty cake, and the mile-high chocolate cake. And the grasshopper cake has the exact same combination of the chocolate cake with chocolate-peppermint ganache and peppermint buttercream.  

But I decided to bake another Wintermint Cake the next day (or, I suppose it would be more accurate to say, later that same day). I didn't mind -- I love making Baked layer cakes. Plus, in my haste to prepare everything for the party, I had skipped the food coloring and frosted my Wintermint Cake in pure white buttercream to save time. I was happy to be able to try out the ombre frosting effect.

So I'll just skip right to the frosting. When I frosted the party cake in white buttercream, I had tried using an offset spatula to make dimples in the frosting as shown in the cookbook. It was difficult, even in a single color. I wanted to try a different technique for the pink version and so I more or less followed this tutorial for an ombre petal cake. I took some shortcuts -- instead of piping a vertical row of differently colored frosting dots and swiping each of them before piping the next vertical row, I stayed with one color and a time and piped a single horizontal row all the way around the cake before moving up to the next row. This is why my petals are not vertically aligned, but it saved time since I didn't have to keep switching between piping bags.

My frosting job was far from perfect, but I was happy with the way it turned out, especially since it was my first attempt at this type of ombre technique. One thing I would definitely change in the future is that I would use light pink frosting for the crumb coat; you could see the white crumb coat peeking through in a few places, especially at the seam where the frosting at top edge met the frosting on the side. I also would probably make 1.5 times the frosting recipe so that I wouldn't worry about running out.

I love this cake. I have always loved the classic chocolate cake recipe, which has a clean chocolate flavor and a soft, tender crumb. The peppermint buttercream is out of this world. It was so light and creamy and refreshing, and perfect for winter. I don't think the ganache is necessary or adds anything, so I would be just as happy leaving it out. This cake went fast at our holiday party and there were literally only crumbs left at the end of the evening. Even in all white, this beautiful and festive cake was a huge hit.

Recipe: "Wintermint Cake" from Baked Occasions by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

• "My Cake Has a New Set of Clothes: Grasshopper Cake," January 24, 2012.
• "Baked Sunday Mornings: Mile-High Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream," September 1, 2013.
• "What a Difference Three Years Makes: the Sweet and Salty Cake," April 6, 2012.
• "Baked Sunday Mornings: Chocolate Coffee Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache," March 25, 2012.