TCS: White Chocolate Layer Cake

 When I first found out we were baking the White Chocolate Layer Cake from Nancie McDermott's "Southern Cakes" I was slightly disappointed as I'd really been hoping for Tipsy Cake to win. I mean, we're talking layer cakes soaked in sweet wine which seemed like a win win situation to me.

Now I should go on record as saying I like white chocolate. But I was a tiny bit dubious about this recipe with the white chocolate in the frosting and cake. Normally I like my cakes to have some kind of flavor contrast, like white cake with chocolate frosting or chocolate cake with vanilla frosting.  But, I figured I'd step outside my baking comfort zone and give this a shot.

Apart from my usual egg white anxieties, the assembly of the cake wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.Considering I'd recently bought a very nifty mini square cake pan, I decided to go with that instead of the traditional three layer cake the recipe called for.

But I had to pick up some peppermint candies. I mean, I'd been fairly well behaved in general with the cake considering I'd initially planned on adding peppermint extract and tinting the cakes red and green until I saw the store was a zoo and hightailed it out of there.

The addition of the crushed peppermint candies didn't quite give the effect I'd been hoping for. I'd been thinking it would give the cake a slightly minty flavor but all it did was give it a slight pink tint. So I sprinkled the rest of the crushed candies on top of the cake and topped it off with an andes mint candy. Nothing gets in the way of my mint obsession when it hits. So I'm not sure how to rationalize the topping with the suggested winter type theme over at the Cake Slice, unless we're talking a box of peppermint candies that dropped off the back of a truck during a snowstorm and were then run over by another truck immediately after.

I liked the texture of the cake a lot. Very moist and tender with a nice flavor. However, I wouldn't have known it had white chocolate in it had I not been the one baking it. Overall, it was a pretty good cake indeed. For the complete recipe, check here.