Striped Layer Cake

Do you ever run home from work excited that you have 3 hours before your significant other will be home to take you out to dinner? I wasn't excited that I had to wait 3 hours to see him, however since he was going to take me out to dinner, that meant I had 3 hours to myself to make whatever I wanted. Woo hoo! So, if you do have this kind of time, what would you make? Well I decided to make a layer cake. And I was thrilled to do it. This was a fun one too, because it was a yellow and chocolate layer cake. KAF had a great post a while back about a birthday cake for fence sitters... If you can't remember if people prefer yellow cake or chocolate, why not combine the two? And it was a great idea. Both cakes were pretty easy mix-and-go varieties, no separating egg yolks from egg whites, no folding ingredients gently together, no these were no fuss, no muss cakes. And delicious at that.

I will definitely use these recipes again for cupcakes. They made a beautiful, thick batter.
Both baked at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes.
The recipe specifies that the chocolate can come out before the yellow, which is true. However, mine were done at the same time. I think I might cook these at a little lower temperature for longer next time, because the yellow rose significantly in the middle. This is fine if you are a pro at leveling everything out before you assemble the layers, but mine weren't really thick enough to do so, and I am not a pro at that!
The recipe calls for a chocolate ganache filling and frosting. I used it only for the filling and frosted it with a vanilla frosting. Both options were good. I think the ganache over all would be great if you have a lot of choco-holics, but possibly too chocolatey for some folks. (Who are said people??? Do they exist and where in the world can they be found??? I am actually married to one, believe it or not. Crazy, but true.) So the ganache is super easy to make. Combine the cream and chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for a couple minutes.
Stir, or use a wire whisk to incorporate the chocolate into the cream.Keep stirring until you have a smooth, even consistency of chocolate ganache.Cut your cakes in half horizontally. This is the part that I am definitely not a pro at! As you can see the middle is a lot higher than the sides on my cake. My cutting probably leaves a lot to be desired too! Once you have the 4 pieces of round cake layers, spread the ganache almost to the edges of the layers, then layer the cakes, offsetting the flavors.

Then it's on to the frosting. I decided that I wanted to try the swiss buttercream that Smitten has been raving about. What really interested me in this frosting was the idea that it wasn't super-sweet. First you start by making a meringue in the double boiler, egg whites and sugar.

Once that is fully incorporated, and the sugar is completely dissolved, you transfer the whole thing to your stand mixer and add the butter. Then you let your stand mixer do all of the work. This takes a while, and despite all of the warnings, I didn't think it was going to come together.
Started out pretty runny.You have to walk away from it. It took me about 15 minutes or so, and I wonder if my batch was just too small for the mixer. I doubled her 'tiny' recipe, since I had already filled my cake and it was a 9 inch round. I would make more next time... I ran out of frosting. Also, in looking back on her pictures, I probably could have let the machine whip for a little bit longer. I never got to the chunky stage she shows, so that should have been a sign. I think I might have been a little anxious to get my cake frosted. So, for future reference for me, and for you too, I guess I would suggest not trying to do this step after the aforementioned dinner out at 8:00pm and before bed that same night. (smile) Ahem, well, then you proceed to frost the cake.

And finally, enjoy! Even if you don't have quite enough frosting. Good thing this cake was just for fun and for practice. But it tasted great.