DORA Cake- Vanilla Cake with White chocolate & Blackberry Filling

And here it is! A cake ordered by my niece . She was so excited and wanted a Dora cake for her 3rd birthday. A toothpick, a scissor and some papers were all what I had as fondant tools. I had made cutouts of leaves-big and small and then kept on rolled fondants to cut out different sized leaves. Figurines were made a week before.  It was difficuilt without any tools. Dora's hair on the left broke when I tried to fix it up on the cake. I would have handled more carefully.

It's a soft , buttery, vanilla cake sandwiched with the goodness of white chocolate ganache and blackberry jam ,crumb coated with dark chocolate ganache and fondant covering. I was planning to fill and frost the cake with just white chocolate ganache, but once I made the ganache, it was too sweet for my family and so to reduce the sweet effect, added a little bit sour jam and dark chocolate to the cake.

The cake was refrigerated while clicking this picture and thus, the texture looks hard.. but it was soft at room temperature

INGREDIENTS

(I doubled this measure for a 4 layer cake)

courtesy: Martha Stewart

• 
  
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for pans
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 3 large egg yolks
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup low-fat buttermilk
• 
  

METHOD:

1. Preheat oven to 170 C degrees. Butter and flour two 8-by-2-inch cake pans, tapping out excess flour. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. With mixer on low, beat in eggs and yolks, one at a time. Beat in vanilla. Alternately beat in flour mixture and buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix just until combined.
3. Divide batter between pans; smooth tops. Bake until cakes pull away from sides of pans, 32 to 35 minutes. Let cool in pans 10 minutes. Run a knife around edges of pans and invert cakes onto a wire rack. Let cool completely.

Design Inspired from Party City

 White chocolate ganache
Courtesy: Taste of home

Ingredients:

White chocolate  400gms
Heavy cream       1/2 cup


Method:

Take a small bowl and keep chocolate in it.
Bring cream to boil in another saucepan. When you see bubbles at the edges, take it off the fire and pour over the chocolate. Mix this thoroughly and allow to cool for about half-an-hour. Beat for about 2-3 minutes until ganache is double in volume.

Dark chocolate Ganache:

Fresh Cream 300ml

Vanilla 2 tsp

Unsalted butter 2 tsp

Plain Chocholate 300 gm

For the chocolate ganache, heat the cream, vanilla extract, butter and chocolate in a heavy-based pan. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk the mixture until smooth and thickened.

Assembling the cake:

Place one cake, bottom side up, on a cake stand. Tuck strips of parchment paper underneath. Using an offset-spatula or table knife, spread top with ganache. Top with another piece of cake; Spread jam. Now again cake, then ganache, and a final layer of cake. Crumbcoat with dark chocolate ganache.