I found this recipe on an internet search at the absolute last minute before my friend’s wedding, and I didn’t even have time to make a trial cake… so, I was a bit nervous about how it would turn out – but it is an Ina Garten recipe and I have never made an Ina Garten cake that hasn’t been brilliant. I had so many near disasters with all my celebration cakes – for instance: under cooking the cakes and having to shove them back in the oven (even after I had trimmed the top of one, I just covered the top with foil baked it a little longer and then moistened it again with a light sugar and vanilla syrup) The moral to this story is, if you’re stressing about making your celebration cake, you need a near foolproof recipe, that you can bring back from the brink of death and this chocolate cake is one of those cakes. So if you a feeling a bit stressed about making a major celebration cake, I say relax. Even if the icing is a bit more rustic than you planned for, your friends will totally love you for it and all their guests will love you too – in fact, you will feel totally love bombed by the end of the day. The reality is if you are making a friend’s wedding cake with love and care, it will be awesome. The quest for cake perfection, obsessing over crumb consistency and whether or not to use baking strips was giving me nightmares. Deb goes into exhaustive detail with a tonne of useful hints, but when I finally got round to making my friends wedding cake, I had to abandon most of her advice and just wing it. The first recommendation I would give to anyone considering doing a big cake making project like a wedding cake, is to check out Deb Perelman’s series of posts on her wedding cake project. This holds true even if your piping skills are limited to varying size dots or blobs (as mine are) – remember you can always resort to sprinkles for that extra color and movement. Even if you do a fairly basic icing job, the gloriously satiny sheen of the Swiss butter cream will give you an instant cake making celebrity status amongst your friends. Then, perhaps even more importantly: Swiss butter cream can cover up a multitude of cake flaws. Firstly, if you make any kind of layer cake, people think you are pretty amazing but if you make a triple layer cake, they think you are some kind of genius. During this cake making frenzy, I learned a lot about layer cakes and Swiss butter cream. Place the second layer on top, also flat side up and frost the top and sides.In the month before I started this blog, just over a year ago, I went on a major celebration cake making bender, starting with a friend’s wedding cake, then my niece’s 21st birthday cake, followed by a huge triple-layer welcome home cake for another friend and ending with my son’s ninth birthday cake. Frost the top of that layer with buttercream. To frost the cake, place one cake layer on a serving plate, flat side up.Scrape down the bowl, add the chocolate, vanilla, and espresso and mix for 1 minute or until the chocolate is completely blended inches If the buttercream seems very soft, allow it to cool and beat it again. Add the butter, 1 tablespoons at a time, while beating on medium speed.Whisk on high speed for 5 minutes or until the meringue is cool and holds a stiff peak. Heat the egg whites in the bowl over simmering water until they are warm to the touch, about 5 minutes. Mix the egg whites, sugar, cream of tartar and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk.To make the frosting, chop the chocolates and melt in a bowl over simmering water until smooth.Cool for 10 minutes on a rack, remove from the pans, and allow to finish cooling. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Divide the batter between the two pans and smooth the tops with a spatula.On low speed, add the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture alternately in thirds, beginning with the buttermilk mixture and ending with the flour mixture. Combine the buttermilk, sour cream, and coffee. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars on high speed until light, approximately 5 minutes. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Line the bottoms with parchment paper, butter the paper, and dust the pans with flour, knocking out any excess.
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