Cake #2: Vanilla Bean Cake with White Chocolate Buttercream

Happy Mother's Day!

Okay, firstly, the cake was pretty easy. It was my first time using whole vanilla beans which I have always wanted to use in something. I've always liked it in my desserts but never wanted to spend the $8 for 2 beans. Anyway, this recipe called for it, I bought it and it wasn't super vanilla-y at all. I could definitely have added more flavour. The family's opinion was that it was a little dry.

Next was the pain in the butt icing. I realized at 9:40 pm that I needed a candy thermometer to get the correct temperature of the needed suar syrup. So I drove up to London Drugs and bought won for a whopping $10! :) Just a little more expensive than the vanilla beans.

Well, I went through 3 batches of sugar syrup before it was right - thrid times a charm right? The first batch got too hot because the thermometer wasn't submerged enough so it wasn't detecting the temperature at all. I dumped that out. And it was rock hard. Yum, candy! [Picture to come] The second try it crystallized as I was trying to tilt the pot of boiling sugar syrup. [Picture to come] The third time I didn't disturb it and I made sure the thermometer was deep enough and ta da - "soft ball" stage sugar syrup. So then I do exactly as I'm told and start whipping up the egg whites and add the sugar syrup slowly but it didn't whip well at all. There was no way it was turning in to soft peaks. I was worried! But I kept whipping and continued to follow the instructions and it finally came together. Yum! Unfortunately, it lost some of it's white chocolate taste today.

So cake #2 done!

Taste Rating: The cake was okay, not super vanilla which I thought it would be...maybe I didn't get fresh vanilla beans? I will have to check out Granville Island or some specialty shop instead of Safeway. :)

The buttercream was tasty the night I made it but didn't have the flavour of white chocolate the next day. I think maybe some more white chocolate might help. It shouldn't affect the texture of the buttercream either. It was very buttery though and just enough sweetness.

Texture Rating: The cake was a little dry but I will say that I think they keep suggesting too much time for baking. The cake shrunk in the pan and it was dry so I think my next cake I'll cut down the baking time by 5 minutes.

The icing was very smooth and after all the effort it was pretty good. I would make it again since I now know how to make the sugar syrup!

Overall Rating: 7.5 out of 10. The icing was a labour intensive but I did like the basic flavour and texture of the cake and buttercream. I'd make it again.

[Note: The spacing of this post is awful but I couldn't figure out how to fix it. The html is just too confusing and so I gave up!]