Recipe 87 from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman
WW Note: If you cut the cake into 24 slices each piece will be 8 points. If you also eat it with the frosting.it’s going to be another 8 points. I’m wondering if there’s a better way to do a fat free Cool whip frosting to help lower the points for the topping. Something like taking the 0 point raspberry puree and combining it with a fat free Cool whip to get a light topping for the cake that would be far less points. You can always substitute monk fruit sweetener for the sugar in the recipe to lower the points as well.
This recipe can be found in Deb Perelman’s “The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook” on page 252-255 or from the following site:
This is the 6th cake I’ve made in the series of 9 and that’s more cakes that I’ve made in my whole existence. I’ve been skating by in this chapter doing the easy ones but we’re getting a little more tricky these last few. I’ve been nervous but kind of feel better having this one done. The one I’ve been most concerned about comes next…😬
That being said I think I’m glad to have a good yellow cake recipe in my experience. This one is simple and very moist which says a lot since these cakes can tend to be dry and crumbly. The buttermilk in the recipe is likely the thing that helps with that. I made my own buttermilk by putting 1 1/2 tsp of vinegar in the 1 1/2 cups of whole milk. Much easier then buying some and trying to figure out what to make with it!
It’s basically mix and dump and bake for the cake. The frosting is actually what will take a little more time though it’s easy to get started and completed before the cake comes out of the oven.
I opted to use raspberries but any berry and food coloring will get you a combination of colors that work for this. I opted to just use the raspberries but wish I would have use a few of my frozen strawberries too in order to try another color in the mix. The flavor of the buttercream with the berry puree is amazing and has me thinking about how else I could get use the rest of this frosting.
I felt very greatful for my Pampered Chef Deluxe Cooking Blender paired with my Fine Mesh Strainer because the combo of the 2 made this raspberry puree far easier to accomplish! This powerful blender is how I make my own peanut butter and jelly and soups and other delicious recipes. It even has a self cleaning mode that cleans out all the hard to reach places down by the blade. Dreamy 😍!
The strainer was also easy to clean despite the mess it made. And using the Scrapers made it easier to both press the puree through the strainer but also to scrape down the out sides so it was all collected in my batter bowl. I love when all my Pampered Chef tools make these recipes easier!
The next challenge was getting 3 different colors of frosting. I ended up pulling out a little white into 2 bowls and then adding a few drops of the puree into one to give it a soft pink hue. The bulk of the puree went into the rest of the white frosting. My one mistake was not putting enough of the white frosting into the smaller batches. I was just short a small amount for each one. Next time I would probably more evenly split up the batter if I wanted three or four colors so that it was better suited to cover the whole cake. You’ll have leftover frosting either way.
I just barely made it to the end of the cake with the white frosting. And the light pink frosting ran out about 3/4 of the way through the cake. I improvised and just added more of the darker pink to fill in the gaps realizing that it wouldn’t really matter at the end.
Here’s the finished cake with all of the stripes on it. Deb recommends using a knife to score the frosting to give it the design that she shows in this recipe. But I found that it made it a little messier than using just a toothpick.
I did as she suggested and went up and down with the toothpick to help create the design. That process also helped cover some of the flaws that I managed to make as I was piping the cake.
Here it is all scored and ready to be cut. I kind of think it might have been nice to have a different color in there but for the sake of the season (Valentine’s week), I think it’s going to be just fine. It makes a lot of cake and I’m grateful for that accept I’m not grateful for that because we already have a ton of sweets in the house from this past week leading up to Valentines.
So, my plan is to take this to the moms group that I go to every Tuesday morning at our church to try to get rid of most if not all of it. Anything left over I’m tempted to freeze and see how it does.
I think this cake, while time-consuming is actually pretty simple. And I think kids would get a big kick out of making this on a random day.
Deb also gives instructions on how to use this recipe if you want cupcakes so be sure to check that out if you need a home made cupcake recipe.
Alrighty that’s it for this recipe! A fun think to knock out this Monday morning!
Now comes anticipation of have to make the next recipe. Stay tuned it’s going to be a doozy.
The Novice Life 