Thursday, May 26, 2016

Aloha Bakers - Lemon Icebox Cake

This week's bake was light and frothy, except for one bit, which was hard and knotty. First, let it be said, that this is my kind of cake. Billed as an icebox cake, a term I usually associate with wafer cookies and whipped cream, but which really applies to any cake that is as much cream as cake and needs some refrigerator time to truly come into its destiny.
This little beauty started out with a light lemony sponge/angel food, baked in a tube pan. Mine came out slightly wet and salty, but very workable. Next, a lemon curd is mixed into whipped cream is mixed into a gelatinized meringue. All went well until the gelatinization process, which was also around where I shorted out my scale with some spillage. Since it was clear that everything did not weigh 57555@#@$@ grams, I had to go on back into volume measures, which always makes me grumpy. Then, the gelatin just seemed...too stiff. I added a bit more water, and heated it up some more, but in the end what I ended up with were many knotty rubbery lumps and a bit too much water in the whole, which leaked out over the next few days as it rested in the refrigerator. If you look carefully at the photo of the completed cake, you can see a gelatin lump (slightly browner) discoloring the lower right hand quadrant.

I certainly wouldn't have sold it at a bakery, but I would certainly make it again and not screw it up so much. It was much admired at my workplace, lumps and all.









1 comment:

Unknown said...

I didn't know what an icebox cake was although it was obviously something to do with the refrigerator. Lucky this cake seemed to be delicious no matter what we did to it.