BB: White Christmas Peppermint Cake

As I probably mentioned in some of the other food posts this holiday season, we postponed the Christmas stockings-open presents-holiday dinner stuff until January 3 this year. Although I knew the cake wouldn't be a style likely to appeal to either me or the folks next door, I decided to go ahead and bake the White Christmas Peppermint Cake for that meal--I at least like peppermint in pies and cakes, though white cakes generally aren't my thing. We still had a considerable collection of other holiday sweets around, so I figured we'd get along OK regardless. I did stick to my usual half recipe, using 6" cake pans and the jury-rigged arrangement to use Rose's silicon cake strips (which fit 9" pans well) on the smaller pan size.

The cake is a white butter cake, with peppermint extract added to the batter for the holiday flavor (but the cake can be made with vanilla if desired). I had egg whites in the freezer from some previous bake-along recipe, in just the right amount for my half recipe. The cakes baked up very tall and somewhat domed.

The frosting is a "white white chocolate" buttercream--you make a custard by melting white chocolate with butter and adding eggs, then cooking to 160 degrees. That is cooled down, then more butter is beaten until creamy and the custard is beaten in, then vanilla. Perhaps because of my white chocolate bars, mine resulting frosting was a bit off-white. OK, more a pale yellow.

The cake is assembled by splitting the layers, applying a layer of frosting then a sprinkle of crushed peppermint candies. More crushed peppermint candy goes on top for a festive look, though in the humidity of Atlanta the peppermint bits stuck together and formed a sort of lace topper that obstructed the slicing of the cake.

We all did have a piece after our holiday dinner, though several people didn't finish theirs. I heard the usual comment that cake is dry--many of Rose's cakes are not as rich as the pound cake style we seem to eat more often, and so if you try the cake alone (without some of the frosting), it does indeed seem a bit dry. Peppermint in general is not a favorite with the folks next door and I probably should have skipped it, but then it would be a plain vanilla white cake with white chocolate (the horror!) buttercream. In this family of chocoholics, white chocolate is evil incarnate. Or something.

We ate less than half of the 6" cake, and the rest went to the office and again apparently wasn't attractive, though by the end of the day I only had to scrape about a half a piece into the trash. Maybe it the January diet thing....