Stephen’s birthday was on Wednesday, and we’re having some people over on Saturday to celebrate. I have permission to make a birthday cake for him (!!!!) and FURTHER permission to make the Mondrian cake from this book . I’m pretty excited. I made this cake once before, and while it turned out fairly well, I did not have a Pullman loaf pan at the time and had to use regular-sized loaf pans. I ended up buying a Pullman pan after I made the cake the first time, but haven’t used it since then. I’m looking forward to making this cake for real this time.
Let me give you a general idea of how to make the cake. It’s really FOUR cakes, all baked in that loaf pan, and then cut into long strips. Most of the cake is white, but you also have to make a yellow cake, a red cake, and a blue cake to get a couple of strips of each color. After baking these four cakes, you let everything cool and then VERY CAREFULLY cut your strips. You’ll end up discarding (or saving for future trifles) most of the cake because you really only need a tiny bit of the colors, but – trifles are delicious. And I work in an office with coworkers who will eat anything you bring. So.
Anyway, after you have your strips, you freeze them – which makes it a lot easier to not break them in half while handling. Then you coat everything in ganache and stick it all together. You won’t actually know whether the cake is a success or not until you cut into the final product….but you should have a good idea based on how your ganaching went.
I’m also making pizza dough tonight. Pizza dough, and four cakes. It’s only 9:30 in the morning and I’m already chomping at the bit to go home. This isn’t good.
No Promises This Time 