Pretty in Pink: White Chocolate and Lemon Cake!
I made it through my first week at my new job!
I'll tell you one thing, I'm bloody exhausted. Sitting at a desk all day Monday to Friday is definitely going to take some getting used to, and I didn't expect it to be so tiring! You'd think then that with feeling so tired I'd have taken the weekend to chill out a bit and get myself ready for the next week, and believe me there's nothing I would have liked more...
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| As if I didn't noitce my mum's water bottle in the background! |
Of course, that didn't quite work out. Instead, I ended up baking this White Chocolate and Lemon Cake... I just couldn't help myself! There's quite a long and sad story behind this cake, which I won't go into here, but the main purpose of this cake was to make a bit of a fuss over a group of very special people who've been having a really tough time lately (plus the insta needed a splash of colour seeing as my other beige bakes began to take over!).
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| You can't even see the geometric hearts! |
This is the second time I've combined lemon and white chocolate flavours to produce a drip cake, however I think it's safe to say that this cake blows its predecessor out of the water, and demonstrates my ever-improving decorating skills!
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| My first White Chocolate and Lemon Cake, from June 2022! A triumph in its own way. |
All of the recipes used for this cake, with the exception of the lemon curd, come from the Finch Bakery book. I've had so many recipes bookmarked ever since I was bought the book for Christmas, but until now I've not really had the chance to try them. I adapted the recipe for their Victoria Sponge, adding lemon zest and juice to the sponge, and adding white chocolate to their vanilla buttercream recipe.
The sponge and buttercream both came together very easily, and with the cakes cooling I was ready to prepare the filling. The book called for strawberry jam, but instead I chose to go for a homemade lemon curd! Preparing a lemon curd is so easy. Lemon juice and zest are mixed with sugar and butter in a bowl set over a Bain Marie, when the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved a combination of whole eggs and extra egg yolks are added. The curd is then cooked until it coats the back of a spoon, and is left to cool. Simple!
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| My first attempt at geometric hearts, and I'd definitely make them again! |
Decorating the top and sides of the cake was so easy too. I usually struggle to get the sides of the cake smooth, and end up with noticeable rough patches. This time though, by following the water colour method and using a patterned cake scraper, I ended up with my best example of a cake yet! The water colour method is easy enough. Whitening powder is added to the buttercream to produce a lovely white colour in place of the yellowy buttercream colour. A couple of scoops of the white buttercream are then placed into a separate bowl, and reserved for piping on top of the cake!
A small amount of pink food colouring is then added to the remaining buttercream to create a delicate pink colour. Two more scoops are removed from the bowl and placed into a piping bag. A little more food colouring is added to the remaining buttercream in the bowl. This repeated as many times as you like to create deepening shades of pink in different piping bags. I had 5 different shades by the time I was done!
To create the effect, blobs of the different shades of buttercream are piped around the edges and top of the cake in random places. The great thing about this effect is that no two cakes will look the same because of how random the blobs can be! I smoothed the cake with a metal scraper, then used a patterned comb to create the effect! A first for me, but I love the way it turned out.
Any remaining buttercream is added to the reserved scoops of white buttercream to colour it a delicate pink. I then used it to pipe a matching wave-effect border around the top and bottom of the cake, currently my favourite method!
Everything seemed to be going so well, that was until I moved on to my decorations! The geometric heart shapes were the first toppings I attempted, and these actually worked really well. To make these hearts, tempered white chocolate is brushed into the heart shaped moulds and refrigerated to set, before cake pop mixture (crumbled up cake mixed with buttercream) is pushed down on top of the chocolate in the mould. More tempered white chocolate is then poured on top to seal the shape!
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| The geometric heats! |
When it came to the cakesicles though, things started to go wrong. The method for these decorations is slightly different to the geometric hearts. The cake pop mixture is place into the moulds without any chocolate, lolly sticks are inserted, and the cakesicles are left to chill in the fridge. When attempting to "de-mould" the cakesicles, the decorations crumbled around the sticks. I'm guessing the cake pop mixture was too dry, either that or I didn't chill them for long enough...
By this time at was well past 1am, and I'd started baking at about 6pm. .A project bake like this would usually take me most of an afternoon/evening. When I still worked at the pub this was great as I used to get three or four days off, cramming my hours into three or four days. This time though I had to start the cake after work, which meant a very late night for me (I had plans over the weekend so couldn't even start it then!).
So when my decorations crumbled to bits at this time in the morning, I was on the verge of tears. The cake was half decorated, but I had no more chocolate to temper and use for fresh decorations. I went to bed feeling like I had to accept defeat on this one.
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| The half finished cake, as it stood at 1am! |
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