Lavender Cake with White Chocolate
Serves 8-10
Servings: 8
Equipment
- 3 loose bottomed 6" round baking tins lined with non stick baking paper.
- Disposable piping bag optional - if you wish to decorate as above
- double boiler optional - to melt the chocolate, or use a heatproof bowl over simmering water.
Ingredients
For The Sponges
- 185 g margarine "buttery" style or real butter, softened
- 185 g caster sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 185 g self raising flour sifted
For The Icing And Decoration
- 50 g margarine "buttery" style or real butter, softened
- 200 g icing sugar sifted
- 150 g lavender caster sugar
- 100 ml sour cream
- 125 g white chocolate
- 1/4 tsp purple gel food colouring
Instructions
For The Sponge Cakes
- Preheat the oven to gas 4 / 180c. In a large bowl, beat the buttery style margarine and caster sugar together until smooth. (The margarine is soft enough to beat the batter manually however the icing is easier with an electric mixer).
- Beat in the eggs one by one. Finally fold in the flour until the batter is just smooth.
- Decant the batter into three 6inch loose bottomed round baking tins lined with non stick baking paper. Bake in the middle of the oven for around 18 minutes.
- When the cakes are springy to the touch and a cake tester comes out cleanly, leave in their tins to cool slightly before removing and transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
For The Lavender Icing
- Start by simmering water in the double boiler and then melting the white chocolate in the top bowl. When the white chocolate is melted, turn off the heat and set aside to cool slightly (but not to re-solidify).
- Meanwhile, grind the lavender sugar and plain icing sugar together in the Vitamix dry blade container. Around 30 seconds on high speed should yield a completely smooth fine powder.
- Put the buttery style margarine into the bowl of an electric mixer and with the splatter guard in place beat in the fine lavender sugar a few spoonfuls at a time.
- Next beat in the molten white chocolate then the sour cream on a high speed until completely smooth. Finally add the purple gel food colouring to achieve the shade of your choice - I used 1/2 tsp but have reduced the ingredients list to 1/4 tsp as it's always better to add more if you need to. I'd have preferred a less intense shade than shown here!!
To Assemble The Layer Cake
- When the sponges are completely cool, use a serrated knife to level off their tops so to form a flat cake. Discard the pieces of sponge (as a cook's snack!)
- Place the first layer on a pretty plate and slather the surface with icing. Build up the other layers alternating between sponge and icing. Use a small palette knife to tidy up the top.
- Decant a couple of heaped tablespoons of icing into a disposable piping bag and pipe large "pearls" of icing between the layers and around the top edge to decorate and achieve a tidier effect.
- Scatter over some lavender left in the sieve then grate the remaining white chocolate over the top layer. This cake will keep for a couple of days in an airtight container.
Notes
You could use lavender sugar for the sponges as well although I'm inclined to think that this flavour in just the icing is enough!