Italian Cream Cake
Well, if you have been reading any of these blogs, you know that we discarded this recipe a few weeks ago because we found out that it had coconut in it and made Limoncello Cake instead. Well, after some discussion I realized that Aubrey still really wanted to make it.
We decided that since we didn’t really like the texture of coconut, we would need to figure something out to minimize that. Our solution was to put the coconut in the food processor to make the texture less noticeable.
While the name would indicate this cake comes from Italy, in truth, it does not. Despite the name, it is a Southern specialty that is thought to have originated in Texas. It is a classic 3-layer, moist buttermilk cake baked with walnuts and coconut and then topped with cream cheese frosting.
This week’s recipe came from Aubrey’s Bake From Scratch Volume 1 cook book. Our substitutions were limited again since we were going to be serving this to others. We were having a football party and we figured that was a great time to bake a cake. If we served the cake to our guests, we wouldn’t have leftovers for days. In any case, we used sugar substitutes for the sugar in the cake but not the frosting and pecans for the walnuts. (I use them interchangeably in recipes and prefer pecans because they are sweeter. I rarely use walnuts but always have pecans on hand so the substitution is almost always pecans for walnuts not the other way around.)
Ingredients
Cake
- ¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons (198 grams) all-vegetable shortening
- ½ cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 cups (400 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon orange zest
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 6 large eggs, separated
- 2⅔ cups (334 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon (5 grams) baking soda
- ½ teaspoon (1.5 grams) kosher salt
- 1 cup whole buttermilk
- 1 (7-ounce) package (125 grams) sweetened flaked coconut
- 2½ cups (283 grams) chopped walnuts, divided
- Orange Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe follows)
- Garnish: chopped walnuts, orange curls
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray 3 (9-inch) round cake pans with baking spray with flour.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat shortening, butter, sugar, zest, and vanilla at medium speed until fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes, stopping to scrape sides of bowl. Add egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add flour mixture to butter mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture, beating just until combined after each addition. Add coconut and 1 cup (113 grams) walnuts, stirring gently to combine. Transfer to a large bowl.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg whites at high speed until stiff peaks form. Gently fold egg whites into batter. Divide batter among prepared pans.
- Bake until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Let cool in pans for 10 minutes. Remove from pans, and let cool completely on wire racks.
- Spread Orange Cream Cheese Frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake. Gently press remaining 1½ cups (170 grams) walnuts halfway up sides of cake. Using a wooden pick, lightly scrape frosting in an upward motion on sides of cake to create a bark effect. Garnish with walnuts and orange curls, if desired.
Orange Cream Cheese Frosting
- 10 ounces cream cheese, softened
- ⅔ cup (150 grams) unsalted butter, softened
- 8 teaspoons heavy whipping cream
- 1½ tablespoons orange zest
- 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 8¾ cups (1,050 grams) confectioners’ sugar
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat cream cheese, butter, cream, zest, and vanilla at medium speed until creamy, 4 to 5 minutes. Gradually add confectioners’ sugar, beating until smooth.
Our Experience
Since we were preparing for a party, this was mostly Aubrey’s bake. Getting pictures is hard enough when you are in the thick of making something. When it’s just one person, it is even harder to remember to get photos so I am impressed that Aubrey got what she did.
We only purchased 2 oranges and those only gave us 1 tablespoon of zest. (Just a note, when you write down “2 oranges” on your grocery list, make sure the grocery shopper knows what they’re for. When you are trying to get orange zest, the peel is the most important thing to look for. Blemishes, green spots, and damage don’t allow for zesting the whole fruit. It’s also a good idea to note the size needed.) We had to make a decision as to where we would use our zest. We decided to put all of it in the cake rather than to split it up. Our bake was, after all, the cake not the frosting.
We like to use real buttermilk when the recipe calls for it but that usually means we will have buttermilk leftover and will need to figure out what to make with it. (Fried chicken is always an option but I’m going to look at some other baked item. I saw a recipe for pumpkin scones that are just what I am looking for.) If we didn’t buy real buttermilk, we would make a substitute: 1 T. of lemon juice in a 1 cup measuring cup then fill the rest of the cup with milk…voila buttermilk substitute. Kip uses this method for our cornbread recipe all the time.
Once Aubrey had all of the flour mixture combined with the creamed mixture and buttermilk, she mentioned that it was a pretty thick cake batter. It didn’t get any better, so keep that in mind.
As discussed earlier, we opted to put our coconut in the food processor to break it up a little more. It was still chunky, not a coconut flour, but not the long shreds it started out as. Note, we thought we had more pecans than this but didn’t want to run back to the store for more, so, it was about half a cup of pecans rather than the 1 1/4 cups specified. There would be zero for decorating.
Aubrey whipped up the egg whites and they didn’t set up very well, but this wasn’t a meringue so she went with what she had. We figured the texture of the cake wouldn’t suffer much with the whites not forming “stiff peaks”.
Trying to maintain as much loft in the egg whites as possible when the batter is super thick is a challenge for sure. Once again, I think Aubrey did a good job. We eyeballed the measuring of batter into the three cake pans. We have two 9″ round pans and a 9″ spring form pan which was going to have to do since this was a 3 layer cake.
Here is where we lost out on some photos. It’s kind of like a soap opera baby…it goes from being 1 week old all the way to being 2 in two weeks. Our cake here goes from just popped into the oven to being frosted and ready to cut in one photo frame. 😉
While making the frosting, Aubrey commented on how much sugar was called for. She decided to cut it in half and we ended up not having enough frosting to cover the cake. The frosting was also pretty creamy. It didn’t have a texture that would allow for hanging on the side of the cake. It was still frosting though, so, it was going to work no matter what its consistency. We just had to rethink what the cake was going to look like when completed. We had wanted to put the nuts and orange peel on the top but both of those options were out since we didn’t have enough of either of them to do anything. Rustic…that’s the new plan. We were just going to go with a crumb coat look and call it good. Once again, nobody was going to eat it because they didn’t appreciate how it looked.
What we liked.
As I think I have mentioned in previous posts, I am not a cake person. I’m not the best person to ask about cakes. I thought it was good. Some of our football party guests sampled it and gave it good reviews as well. Aubrey had a few bites (how she helps make all of these baked items and then doesn’t eat them, I’ll never know) and said it was good.
I thought the frosting had good flavor and was necessary because I thought the cake needed some more moisture.
What we would change.
Well, what can we say, we would have made sure to have all of our ingredients in the amounts that we needed. I think the orange in the frosting would have been a nice touch. Speaking of the frosting, since Aubrey didn’t add all of the sugar, I wondered if she had whipped it up more if that would have added more structure so that it would have stayed on the sides of the cake better. It might have given it more volume so we could have gotten the whole cake frosted.
The coconut was hidden in the cake more than it would have been had we not processed it but I could still feel it in the chew. The cake was very crumbly and I was wondering if that was because we didn’t leave the coconut shredded to hold it together. Either way, I still don’t like coconut in baked goods even if this cake was OK. I probably wouldn’t put this cake on my “make again” list but maybe someone else in the family would disagree with me.
I like nuts in baked goods when the rest of the family doesn’t but, as usual, we didn’t have time to toast them and I think it would have been a nice addition.
What we learned.
I’m not sure what we learned this week! Time management, time management, time management!! We should also know that we need to actually look at our ingredients rather than assume how much is in the package. We should also make sure we do our own shopping! I think we learned that it is more fun to bake together!! I was prepping for other food so Aubs had to do it on her own. 🙁
It’s also much more fun when we aren’t baking for anything in particular…just baking to bake.
Until next week, Happy Baking!