B irthday parties, Easter soirees, coronations: They’re all perfect occasions for a good layer cake.
Rising tiers of delicate genoise, or sponge cake, layered with ethereal French butter cream make for glorious culinary architecture.
A layer cake is a celebration in sugar.
Deconstructed, their seemingly intricate parts disassembled and laid out, layer cakes are really pretty simple things.
Sure, most of us have a little bad cake history: warped and sliding layers, icing filled with crumbs, the occasional dry and flavorless cake. But we can overcome that history with a handful of tips.
The right basic cake recipes – one for a white cake, another for a chocolate – and the right kind of frosting – French butter cream – are the foundation.
Then, you’ll need a few simple techniques borrowed from the pros: simple syrup for added flavor and moistness; using a simple tool, the cake leveler, to make perfectly even layers; and briefly freezing the cake layers for easier frosting.
As with any architecture, the key to a successful layer cake is the building materials.
Most layer cakes are made with either a standard genoise, also known as a sponge cake, or a creamed butter cake.
A genoise, which relies on whipped eggs for its volume and is composed of essentially equal parts sugar, flour and eggs, is often the basic foundation for such goodies as birthday cakes, traditional tortes and wedding cakes.
Unlike a heavier, richer butter cake, it stores well and can make different concoctions such as a raspberry-studded cake with white chocolate frosting or a coffee-flavored cake with mocha butter cream.
Because of this versatility, it’s worth taking the time to master a genoise recipe you like. For the recipe here, the Los Angeles Times Test Kitchen spent two days making cakes, testing recipe after recipe. The best: a quintessential genoise, made with a little butter.
A note about genoise cakes: If you’re trying out a new recipe, weigh your components first: If the three major ingredients don’t come out to roughly the same weight, reconsider your recipe.
If you’re going the chocolate route, however, you want a somewhat richer foundation than a genoise. Although you can make a chocolate genoise (just sift in cocoa with the flour), the result will be a light, airy cake with a subtle chocolate flavor. And who wants subtle with chocolate?
So we’ve used a recipe from “Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts,” the classic paean to chocolate baking reissued last year on the 25th anniversary of its publication. Dense, rich and chocolatey, this cake is still light enough for layering.
Whether you use a genoise or a chocolate butter cake, the best frosting for layering is not necessarily the thickest or the richest or the one you pile onto cupcakes. You want a frosting that not only can hold up to construction, but specifically aids in it. One that’s adaptive and can act as decoration and mortar. In other words, you want butter cream. French butter cream.
Unlike frostings made with whipped cream or meringue, French butter cream can be reused and re-whipped to accommodate the vicissitudes of cake assembly. Whip egg yolks with hot sugar syrup and butter for a very rich frosting that is also extremely light and malleable. You can flavor it, adding melted chocolate or coffee or any number of extracts or liqueurs; you can color it or leave it plain. And unless the weather’s very hot, it’s extremely stable.
The third important element in a delicious layer cake is something that many people may not know about (unless they’re bartenders), but which is the secret ingredient in many professional layer cakes and a kind of magic to the home baker. It’s called simple syrup and it’s precisely that: a syrup made simply of equal parts water and sugar.
Dissolve the sugar in boiling water, cool and flavor it with citrus, spices, liqueurs, herbs or extracts. Brushed on the baked and cooled cake layers, it provides moisture to a cake that may or may not have it otherwise, as well as a surprise layer of additional flavor to a normally one- or two-dimensionally flavored cake.
Butter or oil spray for pans
4ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/4pound (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2cup sour cream
1 1/2teaspoons baking soda
2cups sugar
1/2teaspoon vanilla
1/4teaspoon salt
2large eggs
2cups flour, sifted
1cup boiling water
Adjust a rack to the center of the oven and heat to 350 degrees. Butter or spray the pans and line them with parchment or wax paper cut to fit. Butter or spray the paper.
Place the chocolate and butter in the top of a double boiler and melt, stirring until smooth.
Stir the sour cream and baking soda together in a small bowl and set aside.
When the chocolate and butter are melted, transfer to the bowl of an electric mixer. Add sugar, vanilla and salt and beat just to mix. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until mixed after each addition. Mix in the sour cream mixture. On low speed, add the flour, scraping the bowl with a spatula and beating only until smooth. Then, on the lowest speed, very gradually add the boiling water, scraping the bowl and beating only until smooth.
Pour the mixture (it will be thin) into the two pans.
Bake for 25 to 28 minutes, until the tops spring back lightly when gently pressed with a fingertip.
Cool the cakes in their pans for 10 minutes. Then cut around the layers with a small sharp knife and release. Cover with a rack, invert, remove pan, cover with another rack and invert again to cool right-side up. Cool for at least 2 hours before assembly. For a two-layer cake, level the layers and frost. For a four-layer cake, level the layers, cut each in half horizontally and frost.
Makes about 14 servings.
Adapted from “Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts”
Melted butter or vegetable spray for pans
10ounces (about 6 large) eggs
10ounces (about 1 1/2 cups) sugar
10ounces (about 21/2 cups) cake flour, sifted three times
4ounces (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted
Adjust a rack to the center of the oven and heat to 350 degrees. Butter or spray the pans, line the bottoms with parchment, and butter or spray again.
To make a double boiler, fill a saucepan with an inch or two of water and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Combine the eggs and sugar in a bowl that will fit over the saucepan with water (or use the bowl of your standing mixer). Place the bowl over the boiling water (it shouldn’t touch the water), insert a thermometer and whisk continuously to 110 degrees (3 to 4 minutes).
Remove the bowl from the heat (transfer to the bowl of a mixer if you haven’t used it) and whip on high speed until the eggs triple in volume, about 5 minutes. On low speed, stream in the melted butter and mix only until combined.
Add the sifted flour to the mixture in three batches, mixing with a whisk (or the whisk attachment of your mixer) each time until just combined. Try not to deflate the batter; mix as little as possible.
Pour the batter into the two pans, smoothing over the tops. Bake for 15 minutes. Rotate pans and bake 10 minutes more. The cake is done when it springs back when touched lightly and begins to pull away slightly from the edges of the pan.
Cool the cakes in the pans on a rack for 15 minutes. Invert the pans over a rack, remove the pans, then invert again. Keep at room temperature (or freeze) until ready to assemble. For a two-layer cake, level the layers and frost. For a four-layer cake, level the layers, cut each in half horizontally, and frost.
Makes 14 servings.
Variations: add 4 ounces melted bittersweet chocolate or 1 1/2 tablespoons coffee extract or other liqueurs (about 1 to 2 teaspoons).
6egg yolks
1cup sugar
2/3cup light corn syrup
1pound unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature
1teaspoon vanilla extract
In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix the egg yolks until thick and pale lemon-colored.
Put the sugar, one-fourth cup water and corn syrup in a medium, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat and cook, wiping down the sides at the beginning, until the syrup registers 215 degrees on a candy thermometer, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat.
With the mixer on low, carefully pour the hot syrup into the eggs in a slow stream. Once the syrup has been poured in, turn the mixer to high speed and whip until the outside of the bowl is room temperature to the touch, about 15 minutes.
Add the cubes of butter, a few at a time. Whip until all the butter is incorporated.
Add the vanilla extract. The butter cream should be stiff and glossy and spreadable. If it’s too warm and is too liquid, just put the mixing bowl of butter cream (and the whip too) into the refrigerator for 15 minutes or so until it firms up. Then whip it at high speed until it’s spreadable. The butter cream can be stored in the refrigerator if not using, but bring it back to room temperature and rewhip it at high speed to get it back to the proper consistency before frosting.
Makes 41/2 cups, enough to frost one four-layer cake.
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