Welcome to Cake Diaries! I’m fresh off my latest big-effort bake, so why not add a little side project to my side project to tell you about it. Cake summer begins!
I used to be a cake naysayer. Growing up, I always asked for brownies for my birthday instead of a big sheet cake—you know the ones. Too much (not good) icing or too much (kinda dry) cake, and they never really taste like anything. I stand by brownies being the better call.
There were beautiful cakes to be had out there, fancy cakes, European cakes, cakes that tasted like things other than sugar. Once I started baking in earnest, I realized I mostly prefer simple, single layer affairs full of fruit or with fun textures. Cake does not have to be fancy to be good, but it also turns out even the fancy ones are achievable. It’s plum torte season, so more on not-fancy cakes another time. For the first edition of Cake Diaries, we’re here to talk sassy, Bake-Off aspiring layer cakes.
![https://www.bonappetit.com/story/stunning-layer-cakes-natasha-pickowicz / https://cherrybombe.com/blogs/recipes/natasha-pickowicz-s-passion-fruit-coconut-tequila-layer-cake / https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/dining/how-to-make-sponge-cake-recipe.html](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff6196f3e-23e6-4b2c-9444-c51226c63b5b_2240x1260.webp)
![https://www.bonappetit.com/story/stunning-layer-cakes-natasha-pickowicz / https://cherrybombe.com/blogs/recipes/natasha-pickowicz-s-passion-fruit-coconut-tequila-layer-cake / https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/dining/how-to-make-sponge-cake-recipe.html](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7159fe88-6442-4843-9614-0727f86e8a03_1200x1200.webp)
![https://www.bonappetit.com/story/stunning-layer-cakes-natasha-pickowicz / https://cherrybombe.com/blogs/recipes/natasha-pickowicz-s-passion-fruit-coconut-tequila-layer-cake / https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/dining/how-to-make-sponge-cake-recipe.html](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9c5fee46-1320-4cdc-84eb-da3a3326a0fb_1800x1800.jpeg)
I’d never thought much about baking chic layer cakes in my home kitchen until I encountered the striking and artsy cascades of fruits and flowers and leaves and unique flavor and texture combinations developed by Natasha Pickowicz. Like any self-respecting baking girl I mainlined the work of Claire Saffitz and Sohla El-Waylly, revisited Stella Parks and Dorie Greenspan. Combined with a very healthy pandemic-induced obsession with Great British Bake Off, I started to get the very specific itch to try tackling a fancy-ass cake in my own kitchen.
Lat last year, my mom got me a stand mixer for Christmas, and I bought Natasha Pickowicz’s More Than Cake after watching a video for NYT Cooking in which she makes a giant wedding cake and makes it look easy. By the end she had me going I can do that. While I haven’t gone quite that big yet, I did make my own birthday cake this year.
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This first layer cake was certainly not without tears and minor fuck ups. Compote? Needed more sumac (mine was old), got a little gloppy. Diplomat cream? Way over set. Strawberries for the soak? I don’t know for sure but I think I forgot to put the sugar in there. Buttercream? Did not whip it nearly enough. It took three days, I was stressed, I shed a tear or two, but by the end I was so proud of myself (see grin above) and I already wanted to do it again. Even with little errors, the results were shockingly good.
Cake Diary #1
HAZELNUT DACQUOISE, TOASTED HONEY GANACHE, SPICY HAZELNUT CRUMBLE, ESPRESSO ITALIAN MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM, HYSSOP FLOWER
Chris’s birthday was last week. I handed him More Than Cake and asked him to pick what excited him. Natasha has the layer cake section of the book laid out in sections for cakes, fillings, and frostings, and then lists out some suggested combos. Chris pointed to the hazelnut Dacquoise sponge, a toasted honey ganache, and espresso Italian meringue buttercream. Because he’s a genius, that turned out to be 3/4 of the way to Natasha’s suggested combo, which also featured candied hazelnuts with cayenne and nori powder.
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Dacquoise is basically a meringue with nuts, and I didn’t find it all that different from making a chiffon cake. Whip your (many) egg whites, salt, and sugar, fold in the dry stuff, hazelnut flour, more ground hazelnuts, powdered sugar. She has you bake one thin layer on a sheet tray, a clutch move. Not pictured, the entire container of hazelnuts I ended up blanching and pealing. (Thanks for helping, Chris.)
The rest of the hazelnuts had to get candied in sugar, and this ended up being the hardest part. Natasha says how long it would take for the sugar mixture to seize (you can see the white sugar bits in that third photo) but not how long it would take for the sugar to remelt (the caramelized result). The answer? On my shitty stovetop? An hour. Bless Chris for making dinner for us while this happened.
Before that I made a ganache, and this was the thing I thought would be the hardest. Honestly, you’re just stirring milk and cream into hot honey and melting in chocolate over heat. The only thing I ran into is that I bought sheet gelatin for the last cake, and it didn’t work then. Nor did I bother to change it up this time, so even cooled at the back of my fridge it turned out puddingy, not stiff like it should be. Toasted honey, it turns out, tastes good no matter what, and it layered up just fine, though it made frosting a little tricky at times.
The biggest surprise was that unlike my Swiss meringue buttercream attempt, the Italian meringue came together in a hot sugar whirlwind that, while stressful, was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I was last-week days old when I learned the difference between the buttercreams. Swiss = egg whites and sugar and vanilla are cooked to 165 degrees over a double boiler, whip, add butter. (My cake bestie Monika sent me Kassie’s big batch recipe and I’m using this one next time.) Italian = a sugar syrup gets heated to 225 degrees and slowly streamed into whipped egg whites (Natasha had me use egg yolks too so ours was extra thick), add butter. It started out a little wild. Softball stage sugar is terrifying and I realized I only had the one espresso shot so I could not fuck up. I did not know the sugar would solidify a bit against the side of the mixer and was convinced that was wrong. I dumped the espresso in and immediately realized I absolutely forgot to measure it out. I dropped my butter pieces in one my one assuming I’d wrecked it. Imagine my surprise when it turned out thick and fluffy and luxe.
I don’t have many process photos of assembly this time, but Natasha has you cut out layers from the sheet pan and stack fillings between them, all inside an eight inch cake pan lined with plastic wrap. Then you just turn the cake out onto a stand after a stint in the freezer.
I used our home grown hyssop for my artsy organic decor. The minty, licorice flavor really worked with the frosting and the nutty sponge. We love a happy accident.
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We just finished up the last slices on Wednesday. It held up so well in the fridge thanks to the stability of Italian meringue and some plastic wrap on my slightly leaky ganache. The spice and nori elements of the crumble weren’t as present as I hoped, but my nori was old and I also did not remember to stir either into the caramel, so I bet actually cooking them for a bit would have helped. The deep caramel nuttiness really pulled all the flavors together. The Dacquoise is so fun, really toasty and chewy and soft, and obviously chocolate is great glue for all these layers. Can’t say I’d stand over a hot stove on a 95 degree day stirring slowly melting sugar for an hour again anytime soon, but I was so glad Chris picked this cake out for me to try. I tend to gravitate toward lighter flavors and textures in my cakes, and it was such a decadent treat to splash out in nut and chocolate land for a change.
Coming up on Cake Diaries:
The promised plum torte
A chiffon layer cake but make the frosting and filling uhm…easier