Help rescue my layer cake!

I made a recipe for a 3 layer lemon ginger cake from Epicurious. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Lemon-Ginger-Cake-with-Pistachios-234444

My bottom layer was a bit uneven, which i didn't notice til it was too late. And when I placed the second layer on, it split down the middle! There is no frosting on the sides of the cake to mask the debacle...

Any suggestions? I have a ton of egg yolks to work with...in a bowl of water in the fridge, of course.

BTW, the "mousse" in the middle came out really chunky. I re-did with the same results. I probably wouldn't make this recipe again. Too much work, like the comments say. Haven't tried it yet, though.

Thanks!
Lindsay

ummm.....

frost the sides?

pre-slice it and make the split your first cut?

Make it into a trifle. Put it in a large glass bowl, whip some heavy cream with whatever flavors you like and add a layer over the cake. Decorate with pistachios and serve with a spoon

petermavrik wrote:Make it into a trifle.

Lindsay, the trifle idea is much better than the one I just thought of, but...

Maybe make some kind of pudding? I wonder what happens when you use an immersion blender on broken up cake with a lot of tapioca-like mousse...

frosting on the sides seems like the easiest thing to do.

happy_stomach and I were just discussing your cake over lunch! I'm no expert, but I ruin cakes all the time and therefore have a couple ideas (though trifle sounds good to me - you've basically got a trifle now, all you have to do is cut it into cubes and add some whipped cream)

First of all, where is the break? Is it only one layer, is it across the top, did it break in half completely? If it's just across the top, looks like you could hide it with the chocolate curls and the topping. If it's the sides, I agree that frosting the sides would be the way to go; you could then coat in crushed pistachios.

Do you have room in your freezer for the entire thing? See if you can tease a springform ring around it to hold it back together and freeze until it's solid. Regardless of where the break is, this will probably help whatever fix you come up with. I would then make a ganache with the white chocolate (sometimes this can be tricky, find and follow a recipe) but do it thicker than you would for a frosting - that is, use the proportions for a chocolate truffle. Warm it enough to be spreadable, and spackle your frozen cake back together. Then artfully using chocolate curls, pistachios, and crystallized ginger, cover up your mistakes.

You could also cover with stabilized whipped cream at the last minute, piped out of a piping bag with a star tip (my personal favorite way to cover mistakes) Again, having the cake VERY VERY cold will help a lot.

Mhays wrote:Do you have room in your freezer for the entire thing? See if you can tease a springform ring around it to hold it back together and freeze until it's solid.

If you go this route and have trouble getting the springform ring around it (BTW, the springform ring should be on the top shelf where my sifter was...Lindsay is my roommate), depending on how oddly shaped the cake is, you could also just fit it with a parchment paper "crown" to hold it together while it freezes.

once while i was working at Carlucci in Rosemont, a server put a large elaborate birthday cake that a customer brought in on the floor of our meats, fish, and sauce walk-in without letting any kitchen staff know.

during the mad dash of service, a 2-gallon container of meat sauce was dropped by someone and it landed on a large corner of the cake, just obliterating it.

i was called upon to plate up the cake for presentation to the party and discovered the problem.

lots of whipped cream, copious fresh fruit garnish, and i told the server to quickly present the cake to the table, holding the smashed side closer to her body, before it came back to the kitchen to be sliced and the individual slices plated up.

we pulled it off.

I don't have any ideas better than the ones suggested so far to deal with the crack. (For my money, the trifle idea sounds best.) But I may have a suggestion for the chunky mousse. It's possible your lemon curd is too cold. If you're using lemon curd that's been in the fridge a few hours or overnight, when you add the gelatin mixture, the gelatin will seize up (into chunks of gelatin) pretty quickly upon hitting the cold curd. You could fix this in the future by letting the lemon curd come up to room temperature (or so) before mixing in the gelatin.

This time it could be rough...if you haven't added the egg whites yet, try heating the curd/gelatin mixture gently over a bain marie/double boiler to let the gelatin dissolve. If you've already added the egg whites, you don't want to heat them up. You could try to fish out the biggest chunks, melt, then mix back in, but that could be a bit dicey...

PS. I've been looking for new flavors to go with lemon cake - though I might not do this cake the way it's written, the flavor combinations sound delicious! Please post a review of how it all tastes when it's said and done (I always remind myself that that's what matters with food, not the presentation.)

These are all great ideas! Thanks so much for the replies. I ended up getting called in to work and was not able to try them out, unfortunately, but I ended up spreading the oozing filling mixture around the outside in an attempt to cover the "cavern" that was forming...but it did not work.

Luckily, the taste was a winner and people loved it. They called the ugly thing "shabby sheik."

All in all, i think it would be better as a trifle, and i would skip the "mousse" entirely, unless you get a better recipe for mousse...

Lindsay

Here's Lindsay's cake from this morning (not so great phone photos). I don't think it's ugly at all. (I've made far, far less pretty cakes!) Lindsay's is mighty tasty, too. I usually prefer unadulterated lemon, but the flavor combination in this recipe really works.

The cold lemon curd meeting the gelatin was most definitely my problem-I had just pulled it out of the fridge. I had no idea that would happen!

People definitely liked the flavor combination. Two days since the party debut and there is a little bit left, but it has gotten pretty mushy, but I still think it tastes yummy. Here's a picture:


And there are more in my picasa folder: http://picasaweb.google.com/lindsaybanks/LayerCake#

Linsay, while it definitely has a list to the side, I would not have considered that a cake in need of rescue! Real cakes are like real people, they have lumps and bumps and imperfections - if you want a cake that holds stiffly upright enough to salute, you get it at a bakery and make concessions to flavor, texture, and cost. Nice job!

In my book, if it holds together long enough to be served, it's dessert (if it doesn't hold together, serve it in a bowl!)