It's a Rainbow Song for You!

White chocolate cake with white chocolate buttercream filling and frosting.

 My firstborn is turning five. This is both exciting and troubling as I scour the recesses of my mind to remember the cherub cheeked infant who used to call me "Mimi" instead of mommy...the toddler who, when she found her legs, ran belly first and head back at such a clip I was sure she was channeling Chariot's of Fire. Troubling how these memories are fading.

She's not a baby anymore. She's innocence, discovery, independence and attitude. She's a good fighter. I secretly like this about her when it doesn't exhaust me. She's brave. So brave. I'm secretly jealous of her courage when it doesn't send my adrenals into shock or add to the grey at my temples.

Resilient but fragile. Strong but would crawl back in the womb if she could. Desirous of constant attention but easily distracted. A total ham and ridiculously dramatic. That's what my little girl is made of.

Happy Birthday my sweet Madelaine Grace. A rainbow cake for you in honor of all the color you've brought into my life.

 The Cake:
Inspired by two fabulous cakes I first spotted on Pinterest:
Sprinkle Bakes
Rainbow Cake

The cake recipe is adapted from Anna Olson's White Chocolate cake. The measurements below yielded five 9" layers of cake and enough buttercream to fill, crumb coat and final coat the cake: 

White Chocolate Buttercream

• 4 cups unsalted butter at room temperature
• 32 ounces belgian white chocolate, melted and cooled to room temperature
• 4 cups icing sugar, sifted
• 4 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 

In a stand-up mixer or in a large bowl with electric beaters, beat butter until fluffy. Beat in cooled melted chocolate on medium speed. Reduce speed and beat in icing sugar, vanilla and salt (icing will be a little soft). If needed, chill for about an hour to set before using.
 
White Chocolate Cake

• 1 1/3 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
• 2 2/3 cups sugar
• 8 large eggs at room temperature
• 4 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 cups heavy cream at room temperature
• 16 ounces white belgian chocolate, chopped
• colored food gels

• Preheat oven to 325 F (160 C). Grease and flour 9" cake pans with 2-inch sides and line bottom with parchment paper.

• In a stand-up mixer or in a large bowl with electric beaters, beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition, and stir in vanilla.
• In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking powder and salt. Add flour to butter mixture in 4 additions, alternating with cream, blending well after each addition.
• Melt chocolate in a bowl over barely simmering water, stirring until almost melted. Remove from heat and continue to stir until melted. Pour warm chocolate into cake batter while blending.

• Pour batter into 5 bowls in even amounts. I use a kitchen scale to get as close to the same amount of batter as possible. Add color to bowls one at time and in small amounts. Stir and add until you get the desired color. You don't need much and the batter is slightly yellow so you may need to play with color variation to get as true to the color as you want. 

• Pour colored batter into each prepared pan and bake until a tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Allow cake to cool 30 minutes, then remove from pan to cool completely. Wrap cake and store in fridge (or freeze) until ready to assemble.

• To assemble, slice cake tops horizontally to get a flat, even top. Spread  buttercream on bottom layer and repeat with the next layer. Crumb coat outside of cake on top and sides to cover and level. Chill for about two hours - until crumb coat is firm.

• Cover with the rest of the buttercream and decorate anyway you wish!  

I usually do 6 layers, but I didn't have yellow gel colour when I made this...

The Best Chocolate Buttercream...EVER!

6" 4 layer chocolate hazelnut cake with chocolate hazelnut buttercream: so hard not to keep a slice for myself!

My fascination with cakes came out of desperation.  One night, while watching a cake show on the Food Network I had such a hankering for cake...and not just any cake, but a tall, layered, pretty cake with smooth buttery buttercream and Belgian chocolate. Something you'd see in Laduree in Paris or BAKED in New York. So, since no one has invented the TV that actually hands you the product it is waving in your face, I popped to the nearest grocery store to buy a cake. Not surprisingly, lardy grocery store cake just didn't cut it for me. I went home empty handed. Somehow my moving to a small town coincided with the plethora of cake and cupcake shows that flooded the Network - a visual feast, yet more and more inaccessible to me.

In typical Kristen fashion, I put on some BBC period drama, poured myself a cuppa Earl Grey (in a pretty tea cup - of course) and started baking...my first attempt turned out to be a crumbly mess. But after further research and a lot more practice I started producing quite deliciously moist, dense cakes - my preference. I'm not a big fan of the light and airy cakes...they tend to fall apart and do not hold up under the weight of more than one layer. And they tend to be on the dry side.

When a recipe calls for milk, I use heavy cream. If it calls for buttermilk, I use whole milk yogurt or sour cream. It makes a difference in texture and moistness. Yes it's a calorie issue to substitute higher fat content...sure it's going to add calories, but let's face it...if you're going to reward yourself with a piece of cake, wouldn't you want it to be rich and moist and flavorful instead of something airy and dry? You might as well have a Ryvita cracker. A waste of a reward if you ask me.

There are quite a few methods to making cakes. I have found the one I prefer to produce the product I like most. If you're about to teach yourself how make cakes try all the methods until you find the density and texture you most prefer. Here are a few resources that I found quite helpful in my quest for the yummiest cake:

Martha Stewart's Wedding Cakes,
my favorite: The Cake Bible,
All Cakes Considered
Baked Explorations,

And the best recipe and resource I have found for cake: Anna Olson's White Chocolate Berry Wedding Cake.  I have adapted this recipe for every possible kind of chocolate cake I could think of. My favorite adaptation is a white chocolate cake with white chocolate buttercream and fresh raspberries and lime zest filling. Heavenly. Another beauty is a chocolate hazelnut cake with chocolate hazelnut buttercream filling and frosting.

The magic of this recipe is entirely in the buttercream. It is by far the best buttercream I have ever come across - both tastewise and level of difficulty. There are no egg whites involved (thank you very much Swiss and Italian meringue buttercreams)...no candy thermometers...and no falling flat and turning into a runny mess (like my last Swiss meringue).

Here is my adaptation for a chocolate hazelnut buttercream based on Anna Olson's recipe above:


2 cups  unsalted butter at room temperature 
16 ounces *couverture* bittersweet chocolate (I prefer Callebaut), melted
2 cups  icing sugar, sifted - very important that it's sifted to get a smooth finish
1/2 cup  chocolate hazelnut spread (I prefer Nutella)
1/2 teaspoon Frangelico liqueur

1. Add chocolate hazelnut spread to melted chocolate and mix until smooth. Set aside and let cool to room temperature. In a stand-up mixer or in a large bowl with electric beaters, beat butter until fluffy. Beat in cooled melted chocolate combo on medium speed. Reduce speed and beat in icing sugar and Frangelico (icing will be a little soft). You may have to chill to set before using (for about an hour), but only if it's still too thin from the melted chocolate.
2. Icing can be made ahead and chilled for up to a week, or wrapped and frozen up to a month (thaw refrigerated). Once thawed, beat to make fluffy, then use.

*Please note: your chocolate should be good quality couverture chocolate. Waxy chocolate chips are going to mess with the consistency and flavor of this incredible buttercream...

**UPDATE**
If you need to go nut-free or do not like hazelnut flavor, you can skip the last 2 ingredients. You still end up with a smooth, beautifully chocolaty buttercream.