rainy day cake #12 & #35
I had a day off in late May, and planned to spend it foraging flowers, but it was intermittently misty and rainy all day. I made a clear out the fridge soup, still felt like cooking, and put together this cake from various bits n bobs from the pantry, fridge, and freezer. This is not a formal recipe by any means: the cake mix I used expired in 2014, and the other ingredients are really just things I uncovered while procrastinating my website edits… but if you use this as a jumping off point for your own rainy day cake, let me know!!
To make a 2-layer 8” cake (about 6 servings) I used/you will need:
1 french vanilla boxed cake mix, slightly adjusted as follows, baked in 8” rounds:
use only half the amount of water called for
substitute salted butter, melted, for the veggie oil
add about a cup of canned peaches, well drained of their syrup and mashed, once the batter is mixed. I can my peaches in halves, so my cup of mashed peaches was about 4 halves.
you can substitute any other fruit here, fresh or canned, or frozen, but you may want to use even less than half the amount of water called for if using a really juicy fresh or completely frozen fruit. I definitely could have omitted the water altogether and still achieved a perfectly moist cake with the syrupyness of canned peaches!
~½ cup of jam, jelly, or fruit syrup to complement your cake as a middle layer:
I had almost 2 year old, pretty freezer burnt wineberries & black raspberries on hand, about a cup of each, so I combined those with the syrup from my home canned peaches (which is just water, maple syrup, lemon juice, and lil bits of peach) and cooked them down for about 10 minutes to extract the juice. After straining well to get every last drop, I added the juice back to the pan with about half a cup of cane sugar and a handful of last year's dried rose petals. After about 20 minutes of cooking down, I had a vibrant and floral filling for my cake (with a little leftover, which I popped into the freezer for another purpose another day).
a followable recipe, you ask?
Combine 2 cups frozen berries with 1 cup water or juice in a non-reactive, heavy bottomed pan– the more surface area, the better!
Bring to a simmer and mash berries once they heat up to extract juice. Keep at this for at least 10 minutes or until the berries seem pretty depleted.
Strain extracted juice and berries through a fine mesh sieve until berries are fully juiced!
Add juice back to pan with no more than 30% sugar by weight–about half a cup should do it– and a handful of rose petals, and bring back up to a simmer.
Simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes or until the rose petals are rehydrated and the juice is now reduced by at least a third, glossy, and starting to gel. Test gel by running a rubber spatula across the bottom of the pan: if the jelly does not immediately rush into fill the trail left by your spatula, it’s gelled enough for this purpose! You can also use the freezer test or just watch the drips off your spoon/spatula– if they are slow and gloopy, not running in a stream, it’s gelled enough.
Remove from heat and let cool before adding to cake
a half batch of buttercream frosting, plus edible flowers & weeds to decorate!
Mix 1 stick (½ cup) of well softened butter in a large bowl until creamy, then add up to 2 cups of powdered sugar half a cup at a time. Add a sprinkle of flaky salt and a dash of vanilla extract (or almond, or any other flavoring you like) to taste.
Trim the cake rounds as needed: I like to trim about an inch off the edges, so that it fits neatly on the inside of a dinner plate :) and then I use the cut off pieces to make a couple cake balls to store in the freezer for munchies :) :)
Assemble and frost: my cake came out too moist and my frosting too thick to frost very gracefully, so I just did a quick crumb coat on the top of the bottom layer, added about ¾ cup of the jelly I made (which ended up running down and over the sides anyway), placed the second layer on top and stuck the whole thing in the freezer for 10 min before attempting to frost the top properly. Again, my frosting was too dense, so I had to be super quick and deliberate with the decorative frosting on top, and just did about a half inch with a couple swirls using a small silicone spatula.
Decorate!! I added violets, chamomile flowers, the tippy tops of flowering thyme, and some yellow flowers from bolted mustard greens. It came out so precious and springy!
The cake is fine to keep at room temp, ideally covered, for a couple days, then store any leftovers in the fridge!