Another dry spell for this blog. This time it's because though I have been making bloggable recipes, I lacked the motivation to actually put posts together. Isn't it nice that I always have a different reason? Anyway...Luna, Layla, and Aiden are born so close together (with my husband and myself interspersed in there as well) that birthday cake has figured prominently in my baking recently. Luna turned one so I lucked out there--a professional made her cake and the cupcakes we distributed to attendees who couldn't really stay long. Thanks, COVID.
I wanted to do something extra-special for the big kids. I'm posting Aiden's cake first because his black forest cake was quite involved and I know I'm going to forget what I did if I wait too long. I was so excited to get started that I didn't even do the traditional cast photo! So without further ado...here we go!
Though this was a multi-step recipe, I felt remarkably zen. I think it's because I had set several hours aside for this purpose with no other distractions. No other distractions? What a concept! The cake is the first step--I cut out parchment to line the bottoms of two 9" cake pans.
Then I used Nancy Birtwhistle's awesome lining paste--an even layer all over the pan's bottom and up the sides.
The parchment circle went in the bottom of the pan and the lining paste helped to hold it in place and keep it nice and smooth.
I coated the parchment paper with more paste and repeated the process on the second pan.
The dry ingredients went into a bowl.
The wet ingredients: oil, sour cream, buttermilk, vanilla, and eggs went into the mixing bowl. Once they were nicely blended, the dry ingredients went in.
The dry ingredients, waiting patiently to be incorporated.
Half a cup of hot water was added before I turned the mixer on.
I mixed until everything was just incorporated. The batter was quite loose. I divided the batter into my prepared pans and since I wanted the cakes to be as identical as possible, I used a scale to ensure the same amount of batter went into each pan. I wasn't crazy-precise; just within a few grams.
The cakes went into a 350F oven for an initial 20 minutes. In the meantime, I drained two cans of cherries in heavy syrup and reserved some of the syrup.
The reserved syrup was simmered on the stove until it had reduced from 3/4 cup to about 1/4 cup.
The cherries were cut in halves--or in some cases, just squished into submission. They were pretty soft. At this point I remembered that the original recipe was for three, smaller tiers so I set aside some of the cherries since I wouldn't be using them.
After the initial 20 minutes, I checked on the cakes and they were definitely not ready, so I left them in for a total of about 8 additional minutes. Once they were properly baked, I let them cool on racks, in the pans, for 30 minutes.
This part was tricky because the cake was still a bit hot--first I turned the cake out onto a rack (so it was upside down), then I quickly flipped it right side up. Thanks to Nancy's lining paste, the cakes came out beautifully.
I carefully peeled the parchment off.
Then the cakes just hung out till they were completely cool.
I placed a heavy piece of cake cardboard on a rimmed pan, then I placed four strips of parchment on each side. They helped to catch any drips and keeping them in strips makes it a lot easier to ease them out from under the finished cake.
The first cake went onto the board.
I switched to making the chocolate ganache. Two bars of a very nice semisweet chocolate were cut into small slivers so they would melt faster and more uniformly.
I put them into a heatproof bowl to await the cream.
Heavy whipping cream was heated until it just started to bubble along the edges. This is super important. Cream that is too hot may cause the chocolate to separate. Properly tempered chocolate will merge beautifully with the cream and be nice and glossy.
I poured the cream over the chocolate bits and left it alone for a few minutes.
Meanwhile I brushed the reduced cherry syrup over the tops of both cakes.
When I stirred the cream and chocolate, they immediately began to meld together.
While the ganache cooled, I whipped more heavy cream with vanilla and powdered sugar. The recipe said soft peaks but given our heat, I went a bit past that; not totally stiff, but firmer than soft.
A cup of the whipped cream went onto the first tier.
I used an offset spatula to spread it around.
The cherries went on next...
...followed by a couple of spoonfuls of the reduced cherry syrup.
I carefully added the second tier with flashbacks of a time when I made a cake, added the top tier, and the whole thing slid off onto the floor...
I was very glad I listened to my gut and whipped the cream longer. The tiers stayed together and working it over the outside was easy and relatively stress-free. I say relatively because it was pretty hot that night--even with the a/c turned on.
I added the ganache in the center--the idea is for it to gradually pool outwards and create this cool drizzle down the sides. I think I had more ganache than my cake really needed because it made a really thick coating on top and the drizzle looked more like an avalanche.
I was concerned that the amount of the ganache and its weight would do evil things to the tier placement, but fortunately, it didn't. And look at that gloss!
I popped it into the fridge to let the cream and ganache set. I had to carefully lift the thick drips at the bottom of the cake in order to get the strips of parchment out, but that went well, too. Once the ganache had set I was able to cover the whole thing with plastic wrap and leave it in the fridge overnight.
I was not able to be with Buddy when he blew out the candle but the cake got rave reviews from his parents, Amber, and most importantly, from Aiden, and my little BFF Ava.
Happy 5th birthday, Buddy! Aunty loves you and I'm so proud of how well you are doing!
Here's the promised link:
I also used the Nestle Tollhouse cookie recipe to make these fun dinosaur cookies!
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