truth in advertising / all-occasion downy yellow butter cake

In The Cake Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum writes that her favorite cake, if she had to pick one, would be the All-Occasion Downy Yellow Butter Cake (page 39). I had a birthday cake project to do, and knew I wanted to use a coffee flavored frosting, because the recipient was a coffee lover, so I thought this would be a good, neutral cake base to use with it.  The plan was to decorate the cake as a yarn basket, as it was for someone who liked to knit, so the cake would be made with 3 square layers to build a more or less cube shaped base that would then be topped with rice krispie balls covered in fondant to look like yarn. Originally, I had planned two 9" square layers on top of a 7 3/4" square and beveled in slightly to make a basket shape.  I divided the recipe into a 9" pan and a 7 3/4" pan and made two batches.  The second batch, unfortunately, met with disaster, as I burned my hand trying to remove one of the pans from the oven and spilled the piping hot 9" cake, which promptly broke into a crumbly mess once it hit the open oven door.  This left me with one 9" square atop two 7 3/4" squares; less ideal, but it ended up working okay.

 

The unintended bonus resulting from having spilled the cake was that I actually got to taste some of the cake.  It was, indeed, lusciously buttery and very moist, but not so rich as to be overpowering.  It turned out to be a lovely base for the frosting, which was Rose's classic mocha espresso buttercream (made by adding 6 oz. bittersweet chocolate and 2 Tbsp of instant espresso powder to one recipe of neoclassical buttercream). Let me just say, that frosting was INSANE, it was so good.  And I don't even really like coffee.  Anyway, the cake was assembled and dirty iced, then covered with interwoven fondant strips to resemble basket weave.  There is actually some wood graining on the fondant, achieved by striping a sheet of fondant with gel icing color and twisting before rolling out again. The strips were pressed onto a woven placement to create some wicker-like texture as well.  Two fondant ropes were then intertwined to make the basket border.

 

A white sheet of fondant was draped over the top to cover the frosting and reduce dead space, then the yarn balls were placed on top.  I was thinking of trying to make needles out of sugar, but ran out of time, so just used wooden dowels colored silver instead.  All in all, it came together quite well, and I was pleased with the taste.

 

Ratings:

Overall - 7

Crumb - 7 / moist, light, slightly crumbly

Flavor - 8 / great buttery flavor, not too rich

Appearance - 7 / standard appearance, sides were a little overbrowned while top was slightly pasty; probably would benefit from baking strips

Ease of baking - 8 / simple, no extra steps

 

Details:

Bakeware - 9" square pan and 7 3/4" square pan per recipe (cakes are on the thinner side)

Oven temperature - 350 degrees

Bake time - 25 minutes

Notes - 9" square was thinner and baked faster. Top remained pasty, but was removed when cakes were leveled for assembly.