Long Overdue Post

So sorry this is long overdue. I usually write a post when I've finished a book, and to be honest, I haven't finished any of the 50 States of YA books in a long time. I was a bit bummed that I didn't finish them all last year, so I kind of ran out of steam, plus I've gotten sidetracked by other books, and just haven't had a lot of time to read lately.

It's been so long that my recipes are really starting to get backed up, so I think I'm just going to have to do a few posts of just recipes. I will include a book in this one though, seeing as I read it.

"Allegiant", the third and final book in the "Divergent" series, is that one that I finished for this post. I also read "Insurgent", the second book, but didn't have enough to say about it to warrant a blog post. It was a typical second book with not a lot of progress in the story, just a lot of shifting things around to set up for the third book. "Allegiant" on the other hand, was a pretty good book. I don't want to give any spoilers since I really enjoyed this series, but I was told by multiple people that I wouldn't like "Allegiant", so I guess I went into it with that expectation. Since so many people said that, I figured there had to be something that happens that does not give the typical happy ending. There is, but personally, I think it was a good choice for the story. I ended up liking this book more than most of my friends because I thought it ended just as it should and kept the characters true to themselves. I still liked the first book in the series, "Divergent", the best, because I love the thrill of getting introduced to a new society, but "Allegiant" was a decent way to end the series. I look forward to seeing the movies :) Anyone else read this? What did you think?

For my recipes this time, I have a doozy: the White, White Chocolate Cake Bake-off. Some of my friends are host parents for junior league hockey players (players between high school and college looking to get recruited by colleges). These boys have huge appetites and since I made that amazing "Death By Chocolate" cake for their first hockey player, I offered to make a cake for their next one. He requested a white cake with white chocolate . . . that sounded simple enough, or so I thought. Apparently, his dad is a baker or chef, so I secretly think that he knew how tough this would be and was trying to challenge me, but who knows. All I know is that I looked at this site for some research and ended up very conflicted about what to do, so guess what I did? Yep, I made two cakes. Of course I did ;) Take a look at the website and you'll see that they made EIGHT cakes, so I had a lot of recipes to choose from. I wanted something really, really white, but at the same time, I wanted it to taste really good. Behold, my process:


The first cake I chose was a white cake made with shortening. I added 3 tsp. extra flour, 2 tsp. butter extract, and 1 tsp. vanilla extract to try and improve the flavor based on the reviews, and I think it was pretty tasty.

This one was filled with white chocolate German buttercream (which was also the frosting for 2nd cake . . . read more about it below) and frosted with a crusting buttercream. The frosting worked great for what I was planning to do with it, but I guess I just don't like taste of shortening frosting. It was beautifully white though. The reason I needed a crusting buttercream was because I wanted to try a neat frosting method that I found on Pinterest for making buttercream look as smooth as fondant. Mine wasn't quite as perfect as the example, but it was a pretty slick method, and did look quite a bit like fondant. What do you think?

I attempted to make white chocolate curls to top the cake with, but this did not work at all. I ended up just prying white chocolate pieces off the sheet pan and making a piece of abstract art on the top of the cake. It didn't help that I ran out of time during the decorating phase . . . oh well.

The other cake was a White Butter cake. This recipe was much more exact and included the weights of ingredients, which is something that I appreciate. I couldn't fault this cake either, it was also tasty, but definitely not as white.

The filling for this cake was supposed to be a white chocolate mousse. If you recall from my cake month, I had a few issues with the chocolate clumping up in the milk chocolate layer of my Triple Chocolate Mousse cake. Unfortunately, this happened with this white chocolate mousse too :(
Such a frustration. Have I told you how much I dislike white chocolate? I cannot seem incorporate white chocolate without it seizing up into little chunks :( Therefore both the mousse and the German buttercream frosting became "white chocolate chip" flavored, despite my best efforts. It tasted pretty good, for white chocolate, but the chunks were a bit off-putting (and made for sloppy, desperate piping).

This German buttercream is one of my go-to frosting recipes . . . nice and creamy without an overpowering butter flavor. I couldn't find anything about making it white chocolate flavored though, so I followed the directions here for making a Swiss buttercream chocolate flavored. It probably would have worked better if I had used regular chocolate, but white chocolate is a bit more temperamental. The German buttercream has worked very well in the past, maybe if I had put the chocolate into the warm custard so it could fully melt instead of adding melted chocolate into cooled frosting it would have worked better? I don't know if that would work or not, but since I don't really like white chocolate, maybe I just never try to do this again? That would work ;) So, there you go, my white, white chocolate cake madness. Who knew such a simple request could become so complicated. I took a poll of those who ate the cakes and the votes were as follows:

Appearance:  Smooth frosting - 5             Piped frosting - 1
Cake:           Shortening cake - 4              Butter cake - 2
Filling:          German buttercream - 3      White chocolate mousse - 3
Frosting:       Crusting buttercream - 3      German buttercream - 3

So besides the lovely appearance of the "fondant" frosting method, the cakes were pretty much tied. I guess give them both a try and let me know which one you like better :) Have a great week.