The Daring Bakers’ July 2014 Challenge: Surprise Cake

 

Surprise Cake

For the July Daring Bakers’ Challenge, Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to bake a cake. But not just any cake; she asked us to add in a special surprise for our eyes as well as our taste buds. This was a great opportunity to share the experience my goddaughter Tanya, and I had making, assembling and decorating the ‘Because You’re Mine cake’ from the ‘bake it like you mean it’ cookbook by Gesine Bullock-Prado.

Bake It Like You Mean It: Gorgeous Cakes from Inside Out

 

 

This cake has four components: the vanilla cake, chocolate roulades, buttercream and ganache. We made the vanilla cake and chocolate roulades and let them rest overnight.  The next day, the two chocolate roulades were  each cut into three strips, and the vanilla cake was cut in half horizontally. One half was for the base of the cake and the other half would top the cake. The chocolate ganache hearts were made placed in the refrigerator until there were needed to decorate the cake.  .

Tanya made the buttercream and began assembling the cake. She spread the first chocolate roulade strip with buttercream and rolled it in a roll (like a jelly roll).  Then she spread the second chocolate roulade strip with buttercream, placed the first roll at the end of the second chocolate roulade strip and continued to form a larger jelly roll. She proceeded in the same manner with the rest of the chocolate roulade strips.  As a result the final roll was eight inches in diameter.

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The vanilla cake was baked in a 10-inch round pan as per the recipe instructions, but had to be trimmed to accommodate the 8-inch wide jelly roll. After icing the jelly roll cake pieces and the entire cake, there was about half the amount of the buttercream left.

The final touch was adding the chocolate ganache hearts on the cake. I froze the buttercream to use at a later time. We placed the cake in the refrigerator overnight to allow the butter cream to set.

The next day we were anxious cut the cake to reveal the surprise!  We were not visually disappointed  as we saw what we expected.  After tasting the cake, we found that both cakes were a bit dry and the flavour of the buttercream was bland.  We followed the recipe to the letter and were disappointed in the taste. This entire cake cannot be made in one day.  You make the vanilla cake, chocolate roulades the first day, the buttercream and assembly the next day.

The recipe we used for the  ‘Because You’re Mine cake’ is on page 113 of the ‘Bake it like you mean it’ cookbook or you can find it online at Because You’re Mine cake recipe.   There is another version of this cake on the author’s website, G Bakes.  The components and the assembly are not the same.

Maybe one day we will make that version and compare to the recipe we made.

 

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