The Radiant Birth Cake
“This cake is a bit of a labour of love. It’s a process, it’s a bit romantic and it’s best taken slowly.”
When Yahna and I first chatted about making a cake for Radiant Birth’s first birthday, Yahna spoke passionately about the flavours being tied to the concept of building the mother, her chi (essence), blood and energy. “In postpartum from a Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective”, she said, “we use warming foods such as cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and nutmeg. We also say that breast milk is an extension of our blood and after birth, blood-building foods make a wonderful source of nutrients for new mums”. Beetroot is known to be a great blood-building food, so are apricots, so I used beetroot powder to colour the swiss meringue buttercream that decorates the cake and filled it with apricot jam. We chatted about the birthday cake in Finland being made in labour, a wonderful distraction from the early stages and so this cake is a bit of a labour of love. It’s a process, it’s a bit romantic and it’s best taken slowly. Toasting the flour and browning the butter gives this sponge a beautiful dark golden colour and a beautiful nutty flavour, which works really well with the warm spices and the sweet, tart apricot jam. So here it is, The Radiant Birth Cake a Spiced Brown Butter Genoise Sponge w Apricot Jam & Beetroot Swiss Meringue Buttercream.
Ingredients:
Genoise Sponge:
5 eggs (approx. 260g)
140g brown sugar
140g plain flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
65g unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
Swiss Meringue Buttercream:
½ cup egg whites (from approximately 3-4 eggs)
1 cup caster sugar
340g unsalted butter, softened and cut into thumb sized chunks
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
1-2 teaspoons of beetroot powder
To Assemble:
1 jar of good quality apricot jam
1-2 teaspoons of beetroot powder
Flowers to decorate
*note, if you decorate your cake with any inedible flowers, cover their stems/bases with foil
Method:
Preheat oven to 170 C and grease and line 2 x 6 inch cake tins with baking paper.
Firstly, toast your flour. Measure out your plain flour and add to a dry frypan over medium heat. Toast the flour, stirring most of the time, until it develops a nice toasted colour. It should be a tone of beige. Remove from the heat and leave to cool. You’ll need to sieve the toasted flour a couple of times before adding to the egg and sugar mixture later, as it develops lots of clumps when toasted.
Now, let’s brown your butter. Weigh out your butter and add to a small saucepan over medium heat. Melt the butter, agitating regularly until it begins to foam. When you start to notice little specks developing a brown colour at the base of the pan, agitate or stir frequently until all of the butter takes on a beautiful golden brown and a nutty aroma. Pour into a separate little bowl or measuring jug and set aside. Don’t leave it in the pan, as it will continue to cook and burn.
Add eggs and brown sugar to a stand mixer with a whisk attachment and beat on high speed until very pale and shiny. About 5-10 minutes. Lower the speed to medium/low and beat for a further 5-10 minutes or until you can no longer see any bubbles.
While this is beating, combine your dry ingredients. Your sieved toasted flour, ground spices and salt. Prepare a sieve, ready to go. When the egg and sugar mixture is ready, sieve over the dry ingredients and very gently fold through until *just* combined.
Now pour in your brown butter (it should still be slightly warm but not hot!), along the side of the bowl, and fold very gently, again, until *just* combined. Be careful not to deflate your batter.
Divide batter between your two cake tins and place in centre position in your oven for 20-25 minutes until cooked. A cake tester should come out clean if poked into the centre of your cakes.
Leave the cakes in their tins for a couple of minutes before releasing and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack. As these are quite light sponge cakes, they won’t take too long too cool. If you are short on time, place them in the fridge or freezer to speed up the cooling process.
For the swiss meringue buttercream, first step here is to fill a medium sized saucepan with about 2 inches of water, bring to a simmer over medium heat.
Check your butter, if it’s not fully room temp/softened yet, put it somewhere warm or give it 15 seconds in the microwave until it is. It should be soft enough that you can squish it flat between your fingers with little effort, but it should not be warm!
Now combine your sugar and egg whites into the bowl of your stand mixer. Combine well with a spatula so that no clumps of dry sugar remain.
Place the stand mixer bowl over the top of the saucepan of boiling water, ensuring that the bottom of the bowl is not touching any water. We just want the steam to warm the bowl. Mix constantly with your spatula and test frequently by pinching a small amount between your fingers and rubbing to feel for grainy sugar. Keep going until you can no longer feel any sugar granules, no more sandiness. The sugar is now dissolved and you can remove this from the heat.
Place the bowl onto your stand mixer and with the whisk attachment on a high speed, whisk the egg whites and sugar until stiff peaks form. It will be the softest, most luscious meringue you’ve ever tasted, so be sure to give it a little taste test.
Now add your butter, one thumb-sized chunk at a time, whilst beating on a medium/low speed. Let each addition of butter blend into the meringue before adding the next blob. At first, it will feel like it’s made the mixture a bit gloopy, but by the time you add all the butter, you should have the most glossy, gorgeous buttercream you’ve ever seen. Add your vanilla paste and beat just enough to combine evenly.
If your buttercream starts to split, which will appear as an extra grainy, bubbly looking mixture, try to establish whether it is too hot or too cold. You’ll get an inkling. Not completely sure if your butter was soft enough? Is your mixer bowl still warm from being on the steam? Maybe the weather is particularly warm or cold today? From there, wrap the mixer bowl with either a heat pack or an ice pack, depending on your circumstances, and within a few beats, you should start to see it coming smooth again.
Now, this next step is optional, you can just colour all of your buttercream with beetroot powder if you like. But I think it’s fun to divide the buttercream in half. Keep one half white, and add 2-3 tablespoons of the other half to a small bowl, combine with your beetroot powder, until evenly coloured, and then add this back to the half you’re colouring pink and combine well with a spatula. You may also like to leave it streaky. Play around with it.
Lastly, take about 3 heaped tablespoons of apricot jam out of the jar and add to a small bowl with more beetroot powder, mix vigorously to combine. We’re wanting to colour this jam with the beetroot – it’s for the middle layer.
To assemble, slice each of your cakes in half horizontally. Use a serrated bread knife for this to make it easier.
Place the first layer onto your serving plate, pipe or spread a ring of buttercream around the edge and fill with your apricot jam. Then the next layer goes on, pipe a ring of buttercream and fill this layer with the beetroot coloured apricot jam. Repeat again, with the regular apricot jam and place the top layer on. I spread the white buttercream over the top and the pink buttercream down the sides of the cake. Pipe some pink squiggles on top, if you like.
Decorate as you please with flowers, please remember that if you’re not using edible flowers, it’s best practice to cover the cut stems/bases of the inedible flowers with a little protective layer of foil. These flowers should be removed before serving and eating.
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