An Inside Out Boston Creme Pie Cake

Good morning reader(s)!

Yesterday, the feeling of incredible boredom grew to a point where I couldn't handle it anymore, leading me to youtube and the bon appetit channel. After watching Brad and Claire make doughnuts and pie, I got an urge to bake and I turned to one of my favourite families and decided to make something for them. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I love making eclairs but I simply didn't have time to make those so I thought of something else that has that creme patisserie filling, boston creme pie. I was in a mood to work on my piping skills so it became a cake instead. So as I'm halfway through making batter, I remembered that I don't like to follow rules and decided to make it inside out, so the creme is on the outside and chocolate on the inside. I wanted to redeem myself for the last cake I made which was tasty, albeit very ugly, so this cake took an hour and a half to bake because I only had one silicone pan and I wasn't about to play myself with the metal pans again. And I was excited when I went to make a buttercream out of the creme patisserie only to learn that that's just a regular German buttercream! I like this frosting recipe a lot because it's not mega sweet and therefore complements the rich ganache beautifully. Honestly, there's not much of a story here because it all went pretty well! I'm just going to get to the recipe bit now, if you remember the cake recipe from the melting cake extravaganza, that's the one we're going to use, if not, I will add it in here so donut worry :)

Love from me and my mom who is looking over my shoulder,

TMADJJ

P.S. I'm listing all of the recipes in order that it needs to be done and then putting the assembling steps at the bottom.

---

Cake Yields three 10in rounds

Ingredients

4.5 sticks salted butter

3.5 cups sugar

6 egg whites (save the yolks, you'll need it later)

4.5 tsp vanilla extract

4.5 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

4 1/4 tsp baking powder

2 3/4 cups whole milk

Recipe

Preheat the oven to 350. LINE YOUR PANS PEOPLE or use silicone pans either one works but these yeilded three 10 inch layers.

Beat the butter and sugar together until its a lil mushy and fluffy. Add the egg whites and vanilla for about a minute, it will look kinda curdled but that's fine and correct.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda and baking powder.

Add 1/3 of the dry mix to the original batter and alternate adding the dry mix and the milk until it runs out. I did three additions of dry mix and two of the milk. The batter should now look glossy and thicc, if it still looks curdled then you've probably messed up somehow.

Divide the batter evenly between the pans and then stagger the pans in the oven so they're not overlapping. If they have to overlap, then try and do it so they do so in the least way possible.

I baked my cakes for about 30 minutes, so I'd check it after that long, but keep baking until a toothpick comes out clean and the tops look golden brown.

Cool it for ten minutes before attempting to remove them from the pans and relocating them to a cooling rack. If you don't have a cooling rack don't be alarmed, I don't either, I just put them on another flat surface because that feels vaguely more professional than leaving them in the pans. What I did was put them in the fridge immediately after taking them out of the oven, left them for 15 minutes, and then removed the cake from the pan to a cooling rack. Let them cool completely before you try to ice them.

---

Creme Patisserie Buttercream Yields enough to fully frost the cake

Ingredients

6 egg yolks (aren't you glad you didn't throw those away)

7 tbs granulated sugar

3 tbs all purpose flour (you don't really need this, I'll explain in a minute)

3 tbs cornstarch

2.5 cups milk 1.5 tsp vanilla

2.5 sticks of butter, softened

half a cup of powdered sugar, you can add more if your sweet tooth isn't satisfied

Recipe

Okay so if you know how to make creme pat, you're basically doing that and then spooning that in to the butter at the end. Here are the steps if you're new to this and don't know what on earth I mean by that. You're going to have two bowls out for this, but the second you won't need until later. Start with whisking the yolks and granulated sugar together until they become lighter in colour and then add your flour and cornstarch. Technically you don't need the flour, but it does help the custard stiffen and stay stiff so I would use it. If you don't have it or used the rest of it for the cake, just add it a smidge more cornstarch and you're golden ponyboy. READ THIS NEXT PART IN ITS ENTIRETY BEFORE CONTINUING BECAUSE YOU GOTTA GO FAST In a small saucepan, heat the milk and vanilla to just boiling and pour the hot mixture into the eggy bowl whisk while you pour, bring it all together and pour it back into the pot. Replace it on the burner and whisk continuously until it thickens and almost makes a labec (basically it holds its shape on a ladle). Take it off the heat and transfer it to a clean bowl fairly quickly because you don't want the eggs to scramble in the heat. Place clingfilm over the top and have it touching the custard so it doesn't form a skin. Leave it to cool at room temperature and then stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours to set completely. Skip down to the ganache recipe now.

Once it has set, take out another bowl and the softened butter, and whip the butter until light and fluffy. Add in the cold custard two to three tablespoons at a time and mix completely before adding in more. When all the custard is incorporated, add in that tiny bit of powdered sugar to make it stiffer and just a tidge sweeter. Put it back in the fridge while you work on the next part of assembling. Also, I know that it's a little yellower than the other buttercreams we've made, which is perfect for that boston creme pie look, but if you want to make it for another cake, you can put in food colouring to make it look a little different. Unfortunately, the yellow colour comes from the egg yolks so we can't really get rid of that.

---

Chocolate Ganache Yields enough to assemble and drip baby

Ingredients

1.5 ish cups of semisweet choccy chips

1 ish cup of heavy cream

a pat of butter

Recipe

Okay you're hopefully done with the creme pat. Heat the heavy cream and butter in a saucepan until nice and toasty, don't burn it, and pour it over the chocolate. Let it sit for 5 minutes before stirring it all so it's melty and shiny and beautiful. Now go back up to the creme pat.

---

ASSEMBLY

Y'all can do whatever decorating you want, but I did a drip cake which I'll tell you how to do or you can ignore me and do your own creative thing. The basics though, are these. Make sure all of your cake layers are flat, you might have to cut off the tops of them with a knife, but save your scraps because you can form them into little balls and eat them with the left over frosting. Put a little bit of the buttercream on the surface of whatever is under your cake so it doesn't move while you're decorating. Put your first layer down and cover it with the chocolate ganache, but only the top. Try your best not to get any on the sides. Do the same with the second layer and then set the ganache aside. Put your last layer on and add a crumb coat of the buttercream all around the sides and top of the cake. A crumbcoat makes sure that there's no little bits of cake at the final stage of frosting, helps keep it pretty. You can fridge it at this step for a half hour if you'd like, but if you don't have time, it's not super necessary. After that, pipe a spiral that goes up and around the entire cake with the buttercream in a piping bag without a tip. Smooth all of this with either a spatula or a bench scraper. Have your ganache in a bag with a small rounded tip, I have a kootek piping kit and used the K01 tip. This is where it gets a little tricky to follow so if you don't want these exact decorations, you can do your own thing now. For the drip effect, pipe roughly a bean sized amount on the side of the top of your cake. It should be loose enough that it kinda drips down. You're going to do this around the entire cake top, and connect those dots with a smooth line of ganche around the edge of the top of your cake. You're done with your ganache now so you can put that away. Your buttercream is going to go in a piping bag with a star tip, I used a K35 tip. Just pipe little swirls around the edge of the top of the cake, right on top of the ganache. After that, feel free to shave some chocolate over the swirls or add more ganache or whatever your little heart feels like and then it's done!!