Okay, apparently it wasn't Marie Antoinette who said this, but it still makes a good quote and I thought it would be appropriate as this post isn't about bread...
As I started a tradition of optimistically attempting making incredibly difficult cakes for Ana's birthday by doing a Prinzregententorte last year (took me about 3 1/4 hours), I started searching for suitable recipes this year with 3 key words in mind: Rum, coconut and white chocolate. And yes, I ended up with 3 recipes that I decided would capture the essence of what I was planning. Thought it might work by combining them into one...
First step was doing a kind of cream / mousse for the inter-layer: It involved heating up 1/8 cup of water with 1/3 cup of sugar and melt 50 grams of white chocolate. When everything turns into a smooth cream, leave to cool and then put it to chill. Note to myself: Try to translate cups into 'proper' measures before starting to bake. 'Cups' are for Americans only... Another note: I used half of the measures that the recipe stated, as I didn't want to do a dessert for 6 people. So it gets twice as difficult to get the balance of ingredients right. It's best to use as little water as possible!
None of the recipes I used was for making a layered cake, but I kind of like layering. Maybe because it makes things unnecessarily complicated. Anyway, while the cream / mousse was chilling, I did the cake's layers, I then finished the mouse while the second layer was in the oven. Here's what needs to be done to finish the interlayer material: Beat half a cup of whipping cream and some vanilla extract (so it becomes whipped cream) and fold the chocolate mix under. In my case it turned out to be more of a cream, use less water (as mentioned earlier) and the result would probably be more fluffy. Will try next time!
So, on with the layers:
I started with mixing 100 grams of white flour with baking powder and baking soda. Separately, I mixed then 100 grams of sugar and 50 grams of butter with 2 eggs, 100 ml of plain yoghurt, vanilla extract and a good shot of rum. Then I combined the two parts and mixed approximately 100 grams of coconut cream (which I heated up earlier, so that it was indeed a cream rather than scrapes from a block, in pretty much the same way I'd melt it for doing a thai curry...)
This then went into a buttered and floured spring form and into the oven at 180 degree for 50 minutes. The usual 'bake till it's golden and a blade stabbing the cake comes out clean' rule applies!
I think this bottom layer turned out quite nice (but for some reason I felt I had to slice it into 2 layers... this is not really necessary!). I put it on a large plate and turned my attention to layer no.2 (or no.3 in my case).Here I experimented a little: It's largely similar to the first part (used slightly less yoghurt, because I didn't have more. Note to myself: Buy more yoghurt next time, or possibly a big pot of buttermilk). I didn't melt the coconut cream this time and I used about 50 grams of coconut and 50 grams of white chocolate, both grated. Maybe melting the chocolate and the coconut and adding 50 grams of dessicated coconut flakes might be better. I also think that it could be interesting to vary the texture of the upper layer slightly by separating the eggs and whisk the egg whites stiff, just to fold them under in the end. Didn't do it this time, but hey! This cake's a prototype, there's always room for improvement!
Alright, from now on it's fairly easy: Spread the interlayer cream (or mousse) on the bottom layer, put the top layer over it. Melt white chocolate with butter for the icing and pour it over the cake carefully. Done! Happy Birthday, Ana. Let's enjoy the cake...
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