I decided to make Abby Dodge's "Snow White Layer Cake with Strawberry Mascarpone Frosting" for a recent office birthday. I love white cake.
This is a high-ratio cake (more sugar than flour by weight) but it's mixed with the traditional creaming method. You beat softened butter with sugar and vanilla; alternately add the sifted dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, and salt) and milk; and fold in egg whites that have been beaten with sugar to medium-firm peaks. You divide the batter between two parchment-lined 9-inch pans and bake.
To make the frosting, you mix heavy cream with mascarpone cheese; add powdered sugar, salt, and vanilla extract; beat to firm peaks; and mix in strawberry puree. The strawberry puree is made from two pounds of strawberries that have been rinsed, hulled, pureed, and reduced. I started with four cups of puree and cooked it down to a cup and a half as specified -- it took way longer than the 18-22 minutes stated in the recipe. The puree isn't strained, so there were little bits of strawberry seeds visible in the frosting. I liked the pale pink shade of the frosting and didn't add any artificial coloring.
To assemble the cake, I leveled each cake layer and split it in half, and filled and frosted the resulting four layers. There is a full-page photo of this cake in The Everyday Baker (and a smaller version of the same photo on the cookbook cover), and in that photo it looks like there is only a thin layer of frosting covering the cake. I never like to run out of frosting so I was purposefully a bit skimpy with the amount of frosting I used between the layers. But I ended up with plenty of frosting remaining for the top and sides. I was planning to pipe a border just around the top perimeter of the cake but I had so much frosting that I decided to pipe stars over the entire top surface. And there was still frosting left after that.
Since the entire top of the cake was covered with piped stars, I kept the remaining decoration pretty minimal. The recipe calls for white chocolate curls, but I didn't have any block white chocolate. I did have rolled fondant leftover from making McKenna's communion cake, so I used it to make a few flowers for the top and a Happy Birthday message that I placed on the side.
This cake was lovely. While I didn't think the cake itself was as good as Rose Levy Bernabaum's white butter cake (Beranbaum's has an unparalleled fine texture), the frosting was superb. It had a weightless texture, a clear strawberry flavor, and just the right amount of sweetness balanced with a slight tang from the mascarpone. I was delighted with this beauty.
Recipe: "Snow White Layer Cake with Strawberry Mascarpone Frosting" from The Everyday Baker by Abigail Dodge.
This is a high-ratio cake (more sugar than flour by weight) but it's mixed with the traditional creaming method. You beat softened butter with sugar and vanilla; alternately add the sifted dry ingredients (cake flour, baking powder, and salt) and milk; and fold in egg whites that have been beaten with sugar to medium-firm peaks. You divide the batter between two parchment-lined 9-inch pans and bake.
To make the frosting, you mix heavy cream with mascarpone cheese; add powdered sugar, salt, and vanilla extract; beat to firm peaks; and mix in strawberry puree. The strawberry puree is made from two pounds of strawberries that have been rinsed, hulled, pureed, and reduced. I started with four cups of puree and cooked it down to a cup and a half as specified -- it took way longer than the 18-22 minutes stated in the recipe. The puree isn't strained, so there were little bits of strawberry seeds visible in the frosting. I liked the pale pink shade of the frosting and didn't add any artificial coloring.
Since the entire top of the cake was covered with piped stars, I kept the remaining decoration pretty minimal. The recipe calls for white chocolate curls, but I didn't have any block white chocolate. I did have rolled fondant leftover from making McKenna's communion cake, so I used it to make a few flowers for the top and a Happy Birthday message that I placed on the side.
Recipe: "Snow White Layer Cake with Strawberry Mascarpone Frosting" from The Everyday Baker by Abigail Dodge.
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