| Grand Marnier Birthday Cake:
Ingredients:
For the cake:
12 tablespoons (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened
1 ½ cups sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder (above 5,000 feet cut this down to 1 ¼ teaspoons)
¼ teaspoon salt
6 egg whites (about ¾ of a cup)
½ cup milk (use whole milk, it is a birthday cake for the love of Pete!)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (Use the good stuff, not vanilla flavor, always extract!)
For the frosting:
4 egg whites (about ½) cup
1 cup sugar
A pinch of salt
¾ (three sticks) unsalted butter
3 tablespoons Grand Marnier
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
Baking Pan(s) - As I said above you can bake this cake on a half sheet pan, or a 13" x 9" pan or two 9" round pans. Whatever the pan it needs to be buttered and the bottom covered with a piece of parchment paper cut to fit. Do not skip this last part or you will be cursing my name and you cake when you try to turn it out later.
Method:
Let's talk cake for a minute. One of the things that I always hear from folks is that their cakes fall in the middle. They come out of the oven looking all flat and beautiful then as they cool the center sags. They always ask "What happened?"
I can tell you what happened, you didn't let you cake cook all the way. There is no mystery as to why a cake will fall, the center is not full cooked and as it cools the steam that was holding it up goes away and it falls.
If you don't like the crust that develops you can always slice it off later with a bread knife, but under no circumstance should you remove a cake form the oven until you are 100% sure it is done!
Get out the eggs and milk and allow them to sit out until they come to room temperature, this will allow them to mix more easily and make it far easier to separate the eggs. About 10 minutes before you are ready to start baking take the butter out as well.
Set a rack in the middle of your oven and preheat to 350 degrees (if you have baking above 5,000 feet reduce the temperature by 25 degrees).
Separate the eggs. I always do it the way Martha Stewart recommends, even though she leaves out crucial information to successfully making her recipes (you always wondered why they never turn out like the picture didn't you ?) she has it exactly right with separating multiple eggs.
Get out three bowls. On is going to be for the yolks, the other two are going to be for the whites. What you do is separate the eggs one at a time over one of the two egg white bowls. After successfully separating the egg, pour the white into the other bowl, then separate another egg over the first. This way if you break a yolk and get some into the white you only lose one egg white, not the whole batch.
In your large mixing bowl or the work bowl of your stand mixer, beat the butter with beaters or the wire whip attachment for 1 minute. Add the sugar in a long stream and then cream on high for 5 minutes. Be sure to stop a couple of times and scrape down the sides of the bowl.
You will be scraping the bowl a lot during this recipe, since getting the batter completely the same consistency is really important.
When the butter and sugar a nice and fluffy, turn off the stand mixer or hand beaters. In another bowl combine the flour, salt and baking powder.
Whisk the milk and vanilla into the eggs.
Add one third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Beat until combined. Add half of the milk mixture and beat until combined. Keep alternating the flour and milk until both are gone, and you want to end with the flour.
Mix until very smooth. Pour the batter into your pan or pans. Use the spatula to smooth the surface of the cake. Slip the pan or pans into the hot oven and bake for 30 -35 minutes.
At 30 minutes check the doneness of the cakes by inserting a tooth pick in the center of the cake. If it comes out damp at all, give the cakes five more minutes and check again. You can give them an additional five minutes if you have to in order to make sure they are completely done.
When the cake(s) are done remove them from the oven and let them cool on a wire rack for five minutes. By then the cakes should be pulling away from the sides of the pan. Using a table knife go around the outside of the cake(s). Take them off the wire rack and invert them back onto it. Tap the bottom of the pan, gently, a few times and then remove the pan.
Remove the parchment paper and allow your cake to cool completely.
Above I mentioned that you can refrigerate these cakes and you will want to do it for at least a couple of hours. One of the tricks of decorating a cake is to have the cake itself be cold when you work on it.
To assure your cake does not break we are going to use the pans they were cooked in. Clean them thoroughly then place them over the cakes on the wire rack. Set a cutting board over the pans and then invert the whole thing including the wire rack. This way there is no chance of your cake breaking. Remove the wire rack (which will now be on the stack, and then wrap the cakes, pans and all, in plastic wrap.
Refrigerate for 2 hours up to 7 days.
Frosting Method:
This frosting uses egg-whites, and while we do heat it up it is more to denature some of the proteins and get the sugar fully liquid, it will not go high enough to kill any beasties in the eggs.
In general salmonella is found on the outside of eggs, so washing the eggs and being really careful to keep the whites out of contact with the outside of the shell will get you most of the way they way on safety. But it won't be all the way.
So you have a choice, you can take a risk or buy the criminally expensive pasteurized eggs. I will say that in years of making this frosting no one has ever gotten sick from it, but this time could be the time no guarantee. Sorry.
Set a pan on the stove with 3" of water in it, over medium high heat. Separate your eggs using the method we used for the cake. Mix them in a large metal bowl with the salt and sugar.
Place the egg white mixture bowl over the simmering water and gently whisk for 7 minutes until the eggs are hot (about 140 degrees) and the sugar is completely absorbed.
Remove the egg whites form the heat an pour into your large mixing bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer. Using beaters or the wire whisk attachment beat at high speed until they are light and fluffy and most importantly cool. About 5-7 minutes.
It is really important that your egg whites are not hotter than room temperature, as they will melt the butter if they do and you will get a really soggy icing. If that happens, just put the bowl in a bath of ice water for 5 minutes and then beat until smooth.
Add the butter and beat until smooth and spreadable, about another 5 minutes. Add the Grand Marnier and vanilla a little a time beating until the frosting is smooth before adding more.
Now it is time to frost your cakes! Get out the platter or cake stand you intend to serve it on. In the center of the platter put a good dollop of the frosting, just to help hold the cakes in place.
Tare several strips of parchment paper or wax paper. Take your cakes out of the 'fridge and remove them from the pans, by gently inverting them and tapping on the bottom.
Place the less attractive of the two cakes on the bottom, top down. Slide the strip under the edge of the cake. This will protect your platter from splatters of frosting as you work.
Spread a generous amount of frosting over the top of the cake. Place the second layer of the cake on top of the first with the flattest side of the cake facing the top.
Now it is time to "crumb" the cake. This is putting a thin layer of frosting all over the cake. It keeps the crumbs on the cake and it makes the later full frosting much easier. It should look about like this when you are done.
Return the cake, platter and all to the 'fridge, and let it chill uncovered for 30 minutes. Don't chill the frosting.
Remove the cake from the chill box. Now it is time finish it. You will need an off-set spatula to make this work, but they are not expensive. Start on the sides, with a liberal dollop of frosting on your spatula.
Press the frosting up against the side of the cake and hold the spatula at a 45 degree angle to the cake. Then with your free hand spin the platter or cake stand slowly, spreading out the frosting evenly as you go. When you run out of frosting on the spatula, load it up and start a little way back from where you ran out of frosting.
This will give you a very nice, even, and smooth coating of frosting. Take your time, and if you have enough frosting you can always give it a second layer.
You will want to reserve ¼ of the frosting for the top. The best way to frost the top is to put all the frosting in the center and work your way to the edges.
Since I don't do flowers and what-not on my cakes, I like a nice wavy pattern on the top. But if you want a flat top just use the spatula to flatten it by working from the center outward with it held at 45 degree angle.
The cake can now be chilled, or best served right away. If you do chill it be sure to give it time to come up to room temperature before serving.
There you are bread heads, a cake fit for a Queen!
The flour is yours!
Housekeeping: There won't be any Sunday Bread recipes next week as I am going to be driving a truck cross country in my big move. |
