Unbirthday Cake

inspired by Serious Eats & Some Indian Girl

Ingredients

Cake

• 320 grams all-purpose flour
• 170 grams almond flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 8g Diamond Crystal kosher salt
• 2 sticks of unsalted butter, room temperature
• 420 grams sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 15 grams vanilla extract
• 18 grams almond extract
• 425 grams whole milk, room temperature (or mix of heavy cream and not-whole-milk)

Frosting

• 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3.5 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 tsp diamond crystal salt
• 1/4 tsp rose water (more if desired)
• 3 tbsp milk or heavy cream

Directions

Cake

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat to 350F.
2. Lightly grease two 8-inch cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment.
3. Sift the all-purpose and almond flours together into a bowl. This will probably be harder because the nature of almond flour, but you can do it! I find stopping for a few minutes and letting it sit in the sifter helps.
4. Add the baking powder and salt to the bowl.
5. Whisk thoroughly to combine.
6. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add sugar and butter.
7. Mix on low speed until fluffy, pale, and light, about 8 minutes.
8. With the mixer still running, add the eggs one at a time, letting each fully incorporate before adding the next.
9. Add the extracts and mix just to combine.
10. Sprinkle in about 1/3 of the dry stuff, then drizzle in 1/3 of the milk. Mix until combined.
11. Repeat with remaining flour and milk until both are gone.
12. Scrape the bowl and beater with a flexible spatula, and mix on medium for a few seconds to ensure everything is combined.
13. Divide evenly between prepared cake pans.
14. Cook about 35 minutes. They just need to be set, give no crumbs to a toothpick, and be just lightly browned on top.
15. Cool cakes directly in their pans for 1 hour. This is a great time to get the frosting going!
16. Run a butter knife around the edges to loosen and invert onto a wire rack, peeling off the parchment.

Frosting

1. Cream the butter until smooth with an electric mixer and paddle attachment on low. This will take a few minutes.
2. On medium, add in the sugar 1-1/2 cup at a time until all is added.
3. Throw in the salt and mix briefly.
4. Now, beat in rose water and milk.
5. Keep it going until frosting is light and fluffy.

Thoughts

This recipe can be blamed on two things: GBBO starting back (Trey and I both immediately craved cake after the first episode) and having rose water in my pantry (because I was tempted by it at King Arthur, which is really GBBO’s fault). 


I scoured my stash of recipes for an “easy” layer cake, but nothing was speaking to me. Of course, something like birthday cake sounded best but it’s neither one of our birthdays! Then I recalled that little vial of rose water in the cabinet. What about a cake with rose frosting? Poking around on the internet, the combo of an almond cake with rose frosting came to my attention. I don’t believe the two recipes that ended up inspiring me referenced each other, but there was something about these recipes that seemed like they could make what I wanted.

Trey named this. I think it’s because it’s very similar to my birthday cake…except not. It has the tenderness and sweetness of birthday cake, but the floral notes brought to you by rose make it something very different. In my first attempt at this cake, the almond was less prominent than I wanted it to be, so I wrote what you see above trying to balance the rose with the almond better. It doesn’t really feel like an appropriate late summer/early fall cake, but wow did it satiate that layer cake craving only GBBO can create.

• ← Sage Ice Cream
• Tomato Tart →