We had an early birthday party for my mum this weekend, and she requested a White Chocolate and Raspberry cake to have for dessert. She loves fruity and fresh cakes, but isn't keen on lots of sugarpaste and decoration, so I decided to try my first drip cake for decoration.
I found the recipe on Baking Mad (you can find it here) and made a start. I have made a few sponges with fresh fruit in them and have never been completely thrilled with the results. I find that as the fruit releases its moisture the cake get a little stodgy and the texture sometimes compromises on the taste. This recipe called for white chocolate in the sponges, ganache and buttercream, so I though that the best way to add the raspberry hit would be in the jam filling and in any decoration.
As I started to make the batter I was a little nervous as you fold the flour and baking powder into the liquid, and it did not look auspicious with lumps of flour throughout it after the first addition! As I added more flour it got better so I decided to treat it a little like a muffin batter, and not to over-mix it.
I lined two 8" sandwich tins and one 8"cake tin to divide the batter so I would hopefully get 4 layers and put them in the oven to bake. I was a little disappointed with the deep 8" cake tin as I didn't get a large rise at all, so what had originally planned to be a 4 layer cake turn into a three, but never mind!
Whilst the cakes were cooling, I decided to make a white chocolate buttercream to sandwich the layers together and use as the covering for my naked cake, and a small quantity of white chocolate ganache to tint pink and use for my drips. The recipe specified to use all ganache, however in previous experiences with white chocolate ganache, it never sets how you want it, so I tweaked the recipe slightly and used the failsafe recipes from Mich Turner.
Once all of the layers were cool I levelled and trimmed them to size and then started the assembly. I bought a good quality raspberry conserve and then chopped up a few fresh raspberries to add to the flavour as well. I used my trick of making a dip in the buttercream and having higher edges to keep the jam encased, and this worked well again. I had a few tiny leaks where the juice from the fresh raspberries had escaped, but I figured on a lovely naked drip cake, a few extra drips would not hurt! Once I had finished, I let the cake to set and settle over night.
In the morning my pink pouring ganache had set too hard (typical!) so I warmed it up to the right consistency over an bain-marie (glass bowl over a pan of gently simmering water, don't let the bowl touch the surface of the water) once it was pourable again, I used a tablespoon to gently drizzle it over the edges. Once I had filled in any gaps, I then flooded the top of the cake and smoothed it with the spoon.
For my piping decoration I mixed half of the left over white chocolate buttercream with some of the pink ganache and some more pink food colouring to give a darker shade, and added it to a piping bag with a large star nozzle. The remainder of the buttercream I added to a smaller bag with a smaller star nozzle.
I piped large stars on top using the darker pink as cushions for the raspberries, and then piped a row of stars around the bottom to neaten the edge. I then used the white chocolate buttercream to pipe little stars as extra decoration.
When it comes to piping I never really know when to stop as I think it looks so pretty, but hopefully I stopped in time on this one to make it look more Parisienne Patisserie than childrens party cake!
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