A Spoonful of Sugar

White cake vs Sponge Cake
White cake isn't something that we make in the UK and although I did have a recipe for it from a CIA (Culinary Institute America) book, I didn't feel confident in trying to scale it down from feeding 24 to fitting in an 8" cake tin. So... I used Delia's All-In-One sponge cake instead. In retrospect, I'm wondering if I should have just tried brazening it out with Angel Cake, but I've always been told that Angel Cake can only be made in a tube cake tin. Is this really a hard and fast rule?

Bailey's Bavarian Cream Filling
The original recipe called for a very quick and convenient filling based around vanilla instant pudding. After discovering that Vanilla Instant Pudding isn't available in the UK (thanks to Jackie), except via specialist importers from the States, I decided to be terribly brave and make my own filling from scratch. Gordon Ramsay's Dessert Cookbook provided me with a basic recipe for Bavoris (Bavarian Cream), so I decided to use that and add as much Bailey's as tasted good to the mixture. Much to my surprise it turned out to be very easy and fun. This was also my first time working with leaf gelatine which was huge amounts of fun. Squeezing water out of soaked leaves of gelatine is like squidging some sort of alien seaweed in your hands. Loads of fun!

I then added Bailey's to taste, and stopped after 6 tablespoons when the taste was just verging on being too strong. As flavours dull when they are chilled, I thought that this would leave it with the perfect amount of flavour. Happily, I was bang on and the filling tastes wonderful. I have about one third of it left over in a bowl and I'm quite happily snacking on that when I pass the fridge. Mercifully, I'm already plump otherwise I'd have tremendous guilt even thinking about the amount of fat in this cake...

The Bavoris/Bavarian Cream has an interesting texture. Its definitely set, but its a very refined set. Its not rock hard like jellies can be, yet its firm enough to be cut and still have a nice delicate wobble to it. You could definitely experiment with other flavours of bavoris and buttercream to make a very summery cake. Or just halve the quantities, invite two other people around and make individual bavoris of different flavours... Hmm, I may have to try this out!

Here's my Bavoris recipe:

200ml whole milk
200ml double cream
100g caster sugar
6 large egg yolks
4 sheets leaf gelatine

Place the milk, cream, and 1 tablespoon of the sugar in a medium pan and bring up to boiling point.
Meanwhile, whisk the sugar and egg yolks together until thick and pale. The mixture should get to a ribbon stage.
Very slowly, pour approximately a third of the hot creamy milk onto the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Pour this back into the saucepan with the rest of the milk, whisking well as you do so to ensure that the egg does not scramble.
Place the gelatine in a bowl of cold water to soften for five minutes. Return the pan to the lowest heat possible and stir constantly for five minutes. The custard will thicken slightly, and will coat the back of a wooden spoon.
Remove the pan from the heat. Squeeze the excess water from the gelatine. Carefully whisk the gelatine into the hot custard until dissolved.
Pass the bavoris base through a fine sieve into a clean bowl. Leave to cool to room temperature, stirring once or twice. There will be some foam on the top, but this will dissapear once the bavoris is finished.

To complete the Bailey's Bavoris filling:

6 tablespoons Bailey's Irish Cream, or to taste
200ml double cream

Once the bavoris base is cool, stir in Bailey's Irish cream to taste.
Cover with clingfilm and chill until on the point of setting around the edges. I found this took 20 minutes.
Whisk the double cream until soft peaks form. Err on the side of floppy here, as firmly whisked cream incorporates poorly, and leaves firm blobs of cream throughout the bavoris. I wish at least one cookbook had warned about this!!
Return to the fridge until the bavoris has thickened up again. I left it to chill for approximately 15 minutes this time. Carefully fill cake.

First Stage of Construction - Filling the Cake
Once the bavoris was sufficiently thick (I defined this by the texture being approximately as thick as softly whipped cream and also, it didn't run everywhere when I placed a spoonful on a plate), I started the most nervewracking part of construction. As I don't own an 8" springform tin, I had to use the alternative construction method... clingfilm. Who would have thought it could be so strong? After placing the bottom layer of the cake onto a slightly larger cake tin base, I tore off a very long piece of clingfilm and folded it in half lengthways. I then wrapped it around the base of the cake and squidged the ends together. I left a bit of leeway so that I would be able to ease the top layer of cake over the filling without disturbing the clingfilm and sending cream everywhere. Astonishingly, this worked!!! Only a tiny amount of cream escaped the centre of the cake and although one side bulged a little, I judged it a success. I made doubly sure that things would stay in place by wrapping it with another four layers of clingfilm, pulling those layers increasingly tighter around the cake. Clingfilm rocks! The heavily clingfilmed
cake then went into the fridge to chill. It was probably done after two hours, but I ended up leaving
it for 5 hours, as I got distracted by (a) cleaning up the kitchen and (b) cooking dinner (Nigella's Supper Onion pie which was utterly fab).

Chocolate Fudge Topping
I made this whilst waiting for the bavoris base to chill. I got bored, and I figured it was best to get on and do something rather than sit and stare at a bowl of custard. This was so easy to make! I just substituted golden syrup in place of corn syrup and then followed the instructions. It looked wonderfully glossy and tasted good too, so I poured it into a bowl and set aside.

Second Stage of Construction - Icing the Cake
By this point, it was about 10pm. Admittedly, I did start at around 11am, but still... how many people were spending their Friday night icing a cake? Anyhoo, butter icing is always very easy and very tasty. I've never piped with it before, so this was already a fun challenge. Using my KitchenAid, I whipped up a huge batch of very fluffy, smooth buttercream. The very strong coffee was simply 1 1/2 tablespoons of Nescafe Gold Blend (apparently this is the same as Taster's Choice?) mixed with 4 tablespoons hot water and slowly trickled it in after I sieved in the sugar. The recipe itself didn't call for sieving the sugar, but you should always do this for a good smooth buttercream.

After much peering at instructions and icing tips, I finally decided which one was the star tip (they all begin to look the same at 10pm) and set up the icing bag. Its a very large icing bag, but even this huge bag couldn't accomodate all the icing at once. So, I plonked myself down in front of the tv with a plate of cake, icing bag propped up in a glass, and prepared to strip the cake of the clingfilm.

Clingfilm was still my friend. The bavoris was still exactly how I had left it, and was nicely set. It didn't even threaten to detatch from the cake when I experimentally prodded it. Yay! After taking a deep breath I started piping from the plate up to the top lining paper of the cake and to my great surprise it looked good. And to even greater surprise, it stayed put. Greatly encourage by this, I carried on icing round the cake. Is it me, or does the icing remind you of cacti? The rosettes on the top were equally as easy. Just press down, squeeze and lift. Very, very pretty.

Last but not least...
is the chocolate fudge topping. I microwaved the topping for 30 seconds, which was a tad too long. So I then spent a few minutes stirring it until it stopped boiling. I was terrified that it would burn a hole straight through the buttercream rosettes. Once it seemed to have cooled slightly, I poured it on and smoothed it out with the back of a teaspoon. Actually, it didn't need much smoothing at all; just a little coaxing to ensure that it butted up against the rosettes fully.

I then chilled it down for 30 minutes before wrapping yet more clingfilm around it and leaving it overnight. I gorged somewhat on left-over buttercream, and really couldn't face anymore sugar by 11pm. I have no idea how I managed to sleep on both a sugar and caffeine high, tinged with a bit of smugness too...

And how does it taste?
Absolutely amazing! I'm happily munching on a slice as I'm typing up this entry. The sponge cake is a little dry and nowhere near as fluffy as I'd hoped it would turn out. Next time (and yes, I would definitely do this again, but for a party!) I would try making an Angel food cake to get a fluffier cake and also to get nice white layers of cake for more of a contrast when the cake is cut. The filling works very well to moisten the cake and the flavour explosion when you get a mouthful of cake, filling and buttercream is awesome. I'm very happy with this cake.