Raspberry-Almond Cake with Whipped Cream Filling
The Cake
Adapted from Dorrie's Perfect Party Cake
2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
4 egg whites
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp grated lemon zest
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tsp almond extract
Preheat the oven to 350. Butter and line two 9-x-2-inch round cake pans.
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
Whisk together the milk and egg whites.
Beat together the sugar, lemon zest, almond extract, and butter until very light.
Add one-third of the flour mixture, still beating on medium speed, followed by 1/2 of the milk-egg mixture. Continue alternating until both are gone and beat another few minutes to aerate.
Divide the batter between the two pans and smooth the tops with a rubber spatula. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the cakes are springy. Transfer to cooling racks and cool for about 5 minutes, then run a knife around the sides of the cakes, unmold them and peel off the paper liners. Invert and cool to room temperature right side up.
Stabilized Whipped Cream Filling
Adapted from here
2 cups milk
1 cups heavy cream
1.5 tbsp sugar
1.5 tbsp vanilla
1.5 packets(each 10 g) gelatin
sprinkle the gelatin over 1/4 cup water and allow to gel. Heat the milk, sugar, and vanilla just to boiling, then take off of the heat, stir in the gelatin, and let cool, first at room temp and then in the fridge. when its ready (maybe 3 hours later), the consistency should be similar to a panna cotta. beat the gelled milk until it is smooth. Whip the cream to stiff peaks, then gently fold the two mixtures together until homogenous. pour over the bottom cake layer and refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour.
Raspberry Filling: cook down 1 bag frozen raspberries with sugar to taste until jam consistency - you can substitute jarred raspberry jam, but it will be sweeter and less tangy. smooth a thick layer of raspberry filling over the whipped cream filling, then place the second cake layer on top.
Almond frosting: I have always avoided buttercream on cakes because I can never get it stiff enough not to squish and slip and melt everywhere, but I finally solved the problem by discovering decorator's frosting. it's usually only available in stores that have a specialty cake-making section, and it's very stiff as it's intended to be used for decorations rather than all-over frosting. to get the right consistency, i mixed about 1/2 decorator's frosting with 1/2 regular buttercream, and then added a bunch of almond extract. if your cake is only 2 layers frosting consistency will matter less, so go ahead and use the store-bought or any home-made that works for you. You can also just top the cake with more of the whipped cream filling (though it won't be as pretty).
Slivered almonds (optional): press into the frosting-covered sides of the cake.
Tiered Wedding Cake Assembly
I thought this part was going to be extremely difficult, but it turned out to be not so bad at all. The way I did it was to made the three cake tiers the night before (each one a 2 layer cake as described above) and then assemble them the morning of the wedding. Essentially, my cake strategy was to make 3 carboard discs to match my cake layers, wrap them in tin foil, and poke a hole going through the center of each. To assemble, I put the bottom layer of the cake on its disc and poked 4 straws through the cake in a square around the center and cut them to be just a tiny bit taller than the cake layer itself. these served as supports for the next-largest disc, which i then placed on top of the straws, put on the cake layer, and inserted a wooden skewer going through the center of both layers to stabilize them horizontally. I repeated with the final layer and then used frosting and raspberries to cover up the gaps better the layers. To eat, you just pull the straws out as you go. there are many helpful diagrams and videos online to help with this stuff, just google "how to assemble a wedding cake."
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