Baking With Buddy: Baking Spice Cake with Buddy

So, for this edition of Baking with Buddy, I wanted to make something for my family for dessert for Easter dinner that I knew my family would really enjoy. I know that my dad loves chocolate cake, but that is too easy. Then I thought back to one of my dad’s birthdays and remembered that we made spice cake for his birthday one year and he loved it-and so did everyone else. So, I decided to make a spice cake from scratch. I know spice cake is normally more of a fall-season dessert but I really wanted to make it now, so I found a good recipe and went with it.

Then, a few nights ago after I decided on spice cake, I literally could not fall asleep because I couldn’t figure out what kind of frosting I wanted to put on it. I knew buttercream would be good, but I wanted to branch out and do something different that I hadn’t done before. Because, let’s be honest, that is the purpose of this blog, to get me to go broader in my baking. So I texted my friend over at beinguncreative.blogspot.com and we went though some different frostings, one of which was cream cheese. Call me insane (I know I am) but I don’t like cream cheese. I love cheese cake but not straight cream cheese. So I was wary about cream cheese frosting, but once I found my spice cake recipe, I found an all-spice cream cheese frosting. I was sold.

So, here it is in all of its glory-Spice Cake with All-Spice Cream Cheese Frosting!!

I one and a halved this recipe because the recipe called for a 9x12 pan, and I wanted to do a 2 layer 9-inch round cake. If I were to do this again, I would double the recipe because my round cakes came out very thin. I found both my recipes on Recipezarr.com.

Here is the spice cake and here is the all-spice cream cheese frosting.

The pre-one-and-a-halved recipe for the spice cake:

1 ½ eggs (to get the half egg, put it in a small dish, stir up the egg so the yolk mixes into the white and then pour half the egg in and you can dispose of the other half)

1 ½ cup sugar

2 ¼ + 6 Tablespoons Flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 ½ teaspoon baking soda

¾ cup vegetable oil

1 ½ cup water

1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon

1 ½ teaspoon nutmeg

1 ¼ teaspoon cloves (I didn’t adjust this from the original because the people who reviewed the original recipe said they would cut down on the cloves so I just didn’t adjust it)

1 ½ teaspoon all spice

Preheat the oven to 375.

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, and just stir it. You could probably use a hand mixer but I just mixed it all by hand with a rubber spatula. I had 2 larger soup bowls that are exactly the same so I knew I was splitting the batter in half. So I poured half the batter in one bowl and the other half in the second bowl. This worked out very well. Seeing as I only have one 9-inch round pan, I had to bake one at a time. So grease and flour the pan (or pans) and pour the batter in. Baking these went about 18-20 minutes.

While allowing these to cool, I made the frosting.

3 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/3 cup butter, softened

¾ teaspoon ground allspice

4 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 teaspoons milk

Using a hand mixer, beat together the cream cheese, butter and allspice until they are well blended. Then one cup at a time, add the powdered sugar. At about cup 3, I added the vanilla and one tablespoon of the milk because the frosting was looking dry, and it worked out well. Then I added the final cup of sugar and the tablespoon of milk. It came together amazingly and tastes awesome.

Once you have your frosting and two round cakes, you want to find a plate that the cake fits on nicely. Put the first cake down and frost the top of it, then place the second cake on top of the first and frost the top and sides of the whole thing. My cakes came out with very round tops and so my sides have nice big gaps in them, but I don’t really mind since the cake is going to be enjoyed here by my family. I tried to cover up the gap a little bit while I decorated the cake; it didn’t really work too well but these things happen. I went through several tips, just playing around with the designs and such seeing as I am still really in the experimental stages of decorating cakes.