Sliding in a couple of things I baked earlier in the month but neglected to post, while it’s still February.
First up, the ginger-stout layer cake with buttermilk ermine icing from Claudia Fleming’s Delectable. I love her original version of this cake from The Last Course, so I was intrigued that she reworked it as a layer cake. I sincerely hope she or her publisher issues an errata page for the book, though, because there are some obvious errors, like the flour amount given here. Obviously, 140g does not three 8-inch layers make. Since the only other change from the original is doubling the baking soda to support the higher yield of the recipe, I went ahead and tripled the flour to 420g, similar to other recipes for the same number and size layers, and they baked up just fine with a lighter crumb than the original, appropriate to a layer cake. I initially served this the day after baking the layers, but as with the original I found the texture and flavor of the cake improved with time. I had a little trouble with the icing, in that it had a strange, slightly curdled appearance (though the texture to touch and in mouthful was fine) and was a bit gloppy despite the butter and cooked flour mixture being at cool room temperature. I beat in the dregs of a container of sour cream to help smooth the texture and keep the tang, and threw it in the fridge to firm up a bit. It could have done with a bit more fridge time, but I had to put the cake together quickly before family arrived from out of town, hence the sloppiness. Nevertheless, it was quite a success. I used orange zest in the icing in place of vanilla, which gave it that irresistible creamsicle flavor, which worked great with the buttermilk tang. In future when I want this flavor, I’ll use buttermilk in my usual ermine recipe. The cake and icing recipes are reprinted here.
More recently, I baked pecan brown butter cupcakes iced with ganache, which I made with a combination of 54% and 72% chocolates. This was a riff on my previous riff on a hazelnut cupcake recipe in the first Ottolenghi cookbook, and the one further change I’ll make is to swap maple syrup for some sugar next time, since it goes so well with the other flavors.
