With only four pounds of butter, five pounds of sugar and six hours, you too can go from this:
to this:
Just for the record, I'm missing a fork and possibly part of a finger and the deliciousness of this cake seems to be directly responsible.
For the curious among you I feel that a little recipe action is in order. The pastry is basically three different components: the cakey part, the filling, and the icing. So I'll break it down for you.
Cake: The rich, slightly sweet, bready casing from this recipe is amazing. It's basically a brioche dough. However, the unusual method for incorporating small chunks of cold butter makes for an exceptionally toothsome, moist and sexy baked good. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Icing: I chose to use the icing from this recipe instead of the original because I thought that all of that sugar needed a bit more acidity for balance. More lemon for me please.
Filling: I couldn't quite decide on this one. Creamy sweetened cream cheese, from one recipe, or ground buttery candied pecans, from the other? As with most of my life, when faced with a decision between two equally alluring temptations, I took both. I just halved the amounts for each and folded them together. Hell yes. Do this. It turned out way too good.
Well, another baking adventure is over and all I'm left with is 20,000 calories of wonderful. You have a year people. Next February I want pictures of all your purple, green and gold King Cake goodnesses- get crackin'!
(Oh yeah, feel free to scroll down to the next post for a naughty innards shot...)
L. Pants
