Monday, May 23, 2011

Birthday Cakes

This last Sunday, we celebrated Jacob & Madalynn's birthdays with Matt's family.  So of course I had to make each of them a cake.  Jacob's was Handy Manny and Madalynn's was a princess theme. 

I tried a new butter cake recipe, one that called itself an "icing friendly" cake recipe, and it was, but .... it didn't taste all that great.  I have to say I was disappointed.  This classic cake recipe is used to create tiered confections for wedding cakes, with multi layers and fillings.  And I think that is where I went wrong.  I did not cut layers into the cakes and it was just too much cake and not enough filling.  This is a dense cake that is meant to be used in thin layers.  Will I try this recipe again? Yes.  It stand up to lots of icing very well.

Butter Cake
1-1/2 cups butter, room temperature
2-1/2 cups granulated sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
3/4 tsp Almond Flavoring (optional, you can use any flavoring you like)
3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350*. Spray pans with vegetable pan spray or grease pans.
In mixer bowl cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Mix in vanilla and almond flavorings.  Mix in flour with baking powder and salt.
Add flour mixture alternately with milk, starting with the flour.
Pour into prepared pans. Bake until toothpick comes out clean. (approx 30-40 min.) Cool ten minutes in pan.  Loosen sides and remove.
Cool completely before decorating.
Makes 7-1/2 cups batter.

Notes:
In Madalynn's cake I added 1 cup chopped chocolate to make a chocolate chip batter. And filled it with chocolate butter cream between the two layers.
In Jacob's cake I filled the two layers with cream cheese and strawberries.
Both were iced with vanilla buttercream.

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting
16 ounces powdered sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
3 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
Add 1/4 cup cocoa to above ingredients

Blend ingredients until smooth.  If it becomes too thick add a bit  more milk.
Makes 2-1/2 cups

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