Hello! So today I'll be writing about something a little, (okay, a LOT) different than normal. It might not be the last time I stray away from posting about sewing because cooking/baking is such a huge part of me and how I express my creative side. So here it is, my non-sewing, sewing blog. Ha!
Last weekend was my birthday. I love birthdays. Over the past few years it has become a kind of tradition for me to make my own birthday cake. The first year, (I think it was my 14th or 15th birthday) I made my first Red Velvet Cake. When one of my older friends found out I had made it she got playfully mad at me and told me I shouldn't make my own cakes, and that it was a time for me to be served by others. What she didn't know was that making my own cake was the best gift I could ask for. I genuinely love to cook, doing things like this makes me happy and calm. When I'm in the kitchen, (or sewing room) creating something, I come alive.
So there's the back story, on to the post.
As I said, last weekend was my birthday. I made my first ever Crepe Cake! It definitely won't be the last!
It all started when I saw a photo on Pintrest of a three layered crepe wedding cake. I had never seen or heard of a cake made entirely out of crepes before and I fell in love! I searched for images of more crepe cakes and saw a very cute/delicate one layer crepe cake with raspberries on top, adorable! Then ideas started flooding into my mind. "Yum! Raspberries on top, that's super cute...you know, raspberries go great with white chocolate...but why not stop the raspberry flavor with just the berries on top?...I could layer white chocolate and raspberry sauce between the layers!" A revelation!
White Chocolate Raspberry Crepe Cake
I used 3 different recipes to create this cake so here are the links:
Raspberry Sauce:
I followed this recipe pretty closely. The only thing I did differently was I added about twice as much orange juice because I love the flavor it adds to the raspberries.
White Chocolate Icing:
Now, for this recipe I ended up adding probably triple the amount of powdered sugar. The consistency just wasn't quite right. I added a splash of vanilla extract as well. Yum! Also, I found that there was way too much butter/oil in this recipe. I made both the raspberry sauce and the icing the day before I assembled the cake and put them in the fridge overnight, the next day I opened the fridge to find a layer of oil sitting on top of the now nearly rock solid icing! Gross! I drained the oil off of the top and put the huge chunk of icing back on the double boiler and melted it all over again. Then I put it back in the mixer and added even more powdered sugar until the consistency was just right. in the end it tasted amazing, just took a little tweaking to get it right.
Basic Dessert Crepes: (from the Better Homes and Gardens, Crepe Cookbook from 1976)
1 cup flour
1 1/2 cups milk
2 eggs
2 tbs sugar
1 tbs cooking oil
1/8 tsp salt
(I also added a couple dashes of cinnamon, because it's my favorite.)
Mix the dry then wet mix together until well combined. The recipe says it makes 16 - 18, 6 inch crepes, I made mine 12 inch so I tripled this recipe. Ended up with 20, 12 inch crepes.
If you've never made crepes before it can be a little tricky the first time. I had made them once before but not on this mass scale! And it had been quite a while since I last made them so I was pretty much starting from scratch. I'm sure there are great tutorials online on how to make them so I won't try and explain. All I'll say is that the trick for me, (because I was using a regular skillet, not a special crepe pan) was getting the heat of the pan just right and timing exactly how long it took to brown nicely on both sides. After I figured those things out I had it down to a science! I stood over the stove for about 1 1/2 hours but it is really fun once you get the hang of it!
Assembly: I made all three components of this cake the evening before, (icing, sauce, crepes) so that it would be somewhat fresh the day of. It worked out quite nicely, (except for the icing which was easily fixed).
First I laid one crepe on my cake platter, spread a thin layer of icing over it and then spread on the raspberry sauce "spaghetti sauce" fashion on top of the icing. Topped it with the second crepe and so on a so forth. 20 crepes later, I was finished! Last layer of icing and sauce on the top then arranged fresh raspberries on top, dusted with powdered sugar and voila! C'est fini!
This was the most fun cake I have ever made and it tasted AMAZING! I hope you enjoy it as much as my family and I did!
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