George Brown's Sponge Cake and Martha Stewart's Buttercream

Yesterday I had a few hours to kill in the afternoon and attempted another cake. I needed something light and fluffy. I decided to make George Brown's Sponge Cake from my Art of Baking class and wanted to play with the Buttercream that I made earlier in the week (I wanted to know what would happen if I kept adding the full amount of butter called for in the recipe rather than stopping when it started curdling).

The sponge cake was delicious. Truth be told, I had a small cake baked at the same time and ate it all. So nice and fluffy and not super sweet. My concern is whether it will hold with icing and toppings on it. I'm going to taste test it with my mom (I hope) and we'll see how it holds up.

As for the buttercream, I found it easier to work with compared to the previous attempt but I also found that it didn't hold at room temperature as well. So I think I will revert to stop adding butter when it starts curdling and then just beating it until it is really really smooth.

So here was the process of putting the cake together.

Bake the cake (only about 20 mins of baking time - the beauty of a sponge cake).

The split it in half (which I did a bad job of! I need a better, longer serated knife), added a layer of buttercream, diced up strawberries and threw it on top (diced because my last attempt of small cross slices did not work well) and another layer of buttercream on top.

Then a crumb coat layer to keep the crumbs from going on the icing when I actually work the cake.

Then the frosting is added. Before making the cake today, I watched a 13 minute video of how to make straight, smoooth layers of frosting on the cake and so this was my first attempt at making it. The first layer is added and the goal is not to make it perfectly smooth as another layer will come. I think I did ok for my first attempt ever. :-)

Then came the second layer and this is the more important one. It was 8 p.m. by now and I was tired. This is the best I could do at 8 p.m. Also, you need a blow torch to make the icing perfectly flawless - because you need to heat up the levelling tool. Another thing for me to look into. Learning so much a long the way.

I had a very small amount of icing left over and piped my "S" on it. Can't wait to try it with my mom and see how it turns out as a package. I'm pleased with this attempt.