Hello world!
Sorry for the delay I’ve been flat out and after a little incident that left my laptop screen broken and having to move to the PC it has left me unmotivated. Today I’m posting the 70th Birthday Cake I made for my Father-in-law. He celebrated in fine form with about 50 of his friends and family and if the rattle of the bins is any indication he had a great time. I know I did.
So back in March last year I made a Naked wedding cake for my brother-in-law and his wife. The bottom tier of the cake was a strawberry butter cake. Today’s cake was that same recipe except it had a white chocolate butter cream.
This is the most naked of all the naked cakes I’ve made because he really doesn’t like icing. When we were discussing the cake he said he could just scrape the icing off but this was HIS! party so everyone else needs to enjoy the cake how HE! likes it. There was my white chocolate butter cream icing between the cake layers but that was it.
To make it a strawberry cake I cook down the strawberries so that is more of a syrup than a puree. I don’t add any sugar and let them reduce a little to intensify the flavour. When we can we always go and pick fresh strawberries at the strawberry farm down the road a bit (it’s called Ricardoes Tomatoes and Strawberries). Outside of school holidays they quite often have half price specials so we go and get a couple of buckets full, some for us and some for the cake. After it has cooled I transfer it into zip lock bags through a fine sieve in 1 cup quantities and freeze for a later date if I’m not using it straight away. Looks like my own personal blood bank! ha ha.
When mixing the the cake batter just substitute the milk for the strawberry liquid / juice / puree what ever you want to call it. Naturally this gives the cake a pinky brown colour if you were looking for a more intense pink or red you would need to add food colour. By taking out the milk it makes it virtually a lactose free cake as there is nearly no lactose in butter.
For the cake topper I dipped some strawberries in white chocolate and also made some shards by tempering the leftover chocolate.
The cake was cut by family tradition (karate chop) but he was trying to be too delicate or he was showing his age when he had to use a second hand to finish the cut. The cake was lovely and moist so that wasn’t the reason.
It was a great night and another successful cake that I was really happy with.
I will try and be a little quicker on the next couple of posts hopefully, keep an eye out for my first attempt at macrons. These morsels of yumm will be a regular desert feature I’m thinking.
Well until then,
Thanks for Readin’
Adephagia Cakes 