The Healthy Home "Chef": How “the cake” was made

A couple of weeks before his birthday party, I started pumping Jim for info on what type of cake he would like for the occasion. His usual favorite cake is a chocolate cake with white frosting. But I told him to use his imagination in formulating this request—do you want a mousse filling, for example, or a special flavored cake or frosting? (I had made a white cake with a raspberry mousse filling and whipped cream frosting for my sister’s 30th in Fall 2004, so I felt up to the task). Being a maple nut, he requested on “something maple”; we settled on a chocolate cake with a maple frosting. We agreed that the cake would be the low-fat chocolate cake that I usually make for us (which is shockingly moist and rich for its lack of butter and oil) and a full-fat frosting (it is a celebration, right? Plus, you’ve got to please the “crowd”). I had never made a maple frosting before—so let the research begin.

At first inspection, it seemed as though I would be adding maple flavor (presumably in the form of maple syrup—Jim’s favorite) to a basic vanilla frosting. The two obvious choices of base-frostings to which I could add the flavor were cream cheese frosting and a buttercream. Putting my dictatorial kitchen nature aside, it being Jim’s birthday and his choice, I offered the two alternatives: Maple Cream Cheese frosting or Maple Buttercream. Butter? Cream? Buttercream was the fast answer. Jim has probably had plenty cream cheese frosting over time, and wasn’t terribly intrigued at that suggestion anyway: I make cream cheese frosting frequently, just for kicks—it’s my guilty pleasure when I’m feeling very, very bad. No cake necessary; just Tupperware to store it in and lots of clean spoons for snacking. Having powdered sugar and cream cheese in the house at the same time is very dangerous for me—I swear the stuff just makes itself.

Anyhow…the frosting was chosen. Not only had I never made a maple frosting before, I had also never made a buttercream. Before I had the chance to perform any research, I had assumed that buttercream frosting would consist of a ton of butter and a ton of powdered sugar, with maple syrup added as a flavoring. I was wrong; this is what constitutes an “American” buttercream, but your classic bakery butter cream is far different. My research uncovered the fact that classic buttercream is actually a combination of egg yolks, hot sugar syrup and a ton of butter. Great. When we went to Costco, I bought was must have been a 10 pound bag of powdered sugar, under the assumption that half of it would be used in the frosting; I guess not. (As a side note, I did break into that bag of powdered sugar soon after to make…cream cheese frosting. But I didn’t stop there—I made peanut butter chocolate cream cheese frosting. No cake, just frosting. Finger lickin’ good.).

As an aside: I realize that recently, this blog is not sounding much like the “healthy” home chef but more like the hedonist home chef. Buttercream is an exception, not the rule; and cream cheese frosting is a guilty indulgence that I try not to fall to, but sometimes do. Our diet does not typically consist of these things—once “party” season is over and we get back to everyday cooking, the health factor of these entries is likely to improve. Now back to frosting…

There are other variations of buttercreams, some of which use egg whites, some of which use yolks only, and some of which require the separate preparation and subsequent combination of a Crème Anglaise and an Italian Meringue. I researched buttercream frosting for about a week and consulted probably 20 to 30 recipes in that time, before finally settling on the Neoclassic Maple Buttercream from Rose Levy-Barenbaum’s The Cake Bible. This is a French style Buttercream, meaning that it’s basic constituents are beaten egg yolks, with a hot sugar syrup beaten in and a ton of butter. Typically, the creation of the hot sugar syrup requires the use of a candy thermometer, because you want the sugar to reach the soft ball stage, but not to go beyond this point (which is a much easier call to make if you use a candy thermometer—the other alternative is taking a small amount of the syrup, dropping it in cold water and observing its behavior; a little too much like chem-lab for me). The beauty of this “Neoclassic” buttercream is that it starts off with syrup (the non-maple version uses corn syrup), which contains enough water so as to prevent its temperature from going above 238 degrees (the soft ball stage temperature). So, I didn’t need to run out and buy a candy thermometer or to learn how to use it. Whew, dodged that bullet.

I arrived home from work on Friday night (the party was the next day), and began the frosting preparation. You’ll notice from the photos that we were sharing some fine beers as I did my preparations. I tried to drink slowly, so as not to become too impaired. But, Jim and I often joke that I must be talented in the kitchen because cooking is just about the only thing that I can do just as well drunk as sober (knife usage aside). That being said…onto the frosting:

To start, I took a ton of butter out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature. Cold butter added to the egg and sugar base would cause butter-lumps in the frosting, which are certainly not an attractive feature. The butter would be added last, but had to be above 65 degrees when it was used to avoid this problem. It would take a while to achieve this temperature—even with it cut into small pieces—since the butter had just emerged from the refrigerator. You can see below the continuous butter temperature monitoring; I didn’t want to have the frosting base ready to accept the butter until the butter was warm enough to be used. So the full start of the frosting preparation hinged on the very slow temperature increase of a pound and a half of butter, cut into tiny bits (yes, a pound and a half; when Jim saw it, he exclaimed, “wow, that’s a lot of butter—I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much butter in one place).

Not there yet.

Still not there.

Dear god, how long does it take to soften butter?

Damn it, just a few more measly degrees to go.

Once the butter was reaching the goal-temperature, the preparation of the frosting base began. The frosting base would consist of beaten egg yolks, with a hot sugar syrup beaten in. Since the sugar syrup would be hot and ready for immediate usage once it was prepared, I began by beating the egg yolks (9 of them; yes, 9) until they were pale in color. After this was complete, they were ready to receive their syrup.

The syrup: First, I greased a measuring cup; the hot sugar syrup would be poured into this cup once it reached the proper temperature and the grease would ensure a clean release as the sugar syrup was poured into the eggs. I combined sugar and maple syrup in a saucepan, and stirred until the sugar dissolved and the mixture came to a rolling boil. As soon as this boil was achieved, the mixture was pulled and poured into the greased measuring cup.

I then gradually beat the hot syrup into the egg yolks in a steady stream, using caution not to allow the syrup to contact the beaters, and instead to go directly into the eggs. If the hot syrup contacted the beaters and got flung around the sides of the bowl, it would harden immediately and we’d have crunchy bits in our frosting (yet another unappealing feature I’d like to avoid). Once the syrup was added, the beating continued (and continued, and continued, ugh.) until the mixture was cool again. Once the egg-sugar mixture was cool, the butter could be added. I added the butter, one tiny piece at a time, as I beat the mixture. It took a long time to actually begin to look like frosting; I probably had about one-sixth of the butter left to use when the mixture finally stopped looking ultra-loose and began to take on the texture of a frosting. I was relieved when that finally occurred. Finally, the last of butter was added and the frosting was complete. Challenge met.

Now for all of that butter. Just look at that pile of butter.

Thank heavens--it finally resembles frosting.

Next, the cake assembly. I had prepared the cake layers the previous weekend and had frozen them, wrapped in plastic wrap and stored in heavy-duty freezer bags. The cake is based on a recipe from Eating Well magazine, called “Died and Went to Heaven Chocolate Cake”; for a low-fat cake, it is truly amazing. When I make it for us, I even substitute all whole-wheat pastry flour for the AP flour they call for, and the texture is always moist and lush and the taste chocolaty and rich (they have the recipe on their website: check it out, I beg you). I had taken the layers out that morning to thaw at room temperature so they’d be ready for evening usage. I unwrapped them, and began to build and frost the cake. Cake frosting is not too complicated; probably the only lesser known technique is the use of the “crumb coat”. A thin layer of frosting is applied to the entire cake, to seal in errant crumbs and the final, full layer of frosting is added on top of the crumb coat. After the full frosting layer was applied to the cake, out came the pastry bag for decoration. I’m capable enough with a pastry bag, but I haven’t practiced enough to do more fancy decorations like shells and flowers. Some day, perhaps, but not tonight. I also prepared a simple colored powdered sugar frosting to be used to write the obligatory birthday message atop the final product.