I'm not sure if I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I looooooooove strawberry and chocolate together. Love. So anything Neapolitan is amazing to me. My favorite cake from my favorite bakery is the Neapolitan cake. If I buy a carton of ice cream, I typically gravitate towards the Neapolitan. I just love it all. Got that? Okay. I'll stop talking about my adoration for it now.
Because of this love, after seeing this on Pinterest, I just knew I had to make it. Plus, it looked really really cool. I'm really into the idea of cutting into something and having it look completely different from what you would expect just looking at the outside.
You start with a looooooot of butter. Five sticks, or 2.5 cups or 40 tablespoons, however you want to look at it. In the original recipe, she uses cottage cheese, but I didn't want to do that, so I substituted in the butter. Because deep down I'm like Paula Deen and think that the more butter the better.
You melt down the butter, and then let it cool. So. Much. Butter.
In your mixer, you'll pour three cups of sugar, and then add in the cooled butter, and mix on medium-low speed for three minutes.
Once that has come together, you add in one tablespoon vanilla and one teaspoon salt, and mix well.
To go along with the lots of butter. You then have lots of eggs! Add six eggs, one at a time, and make sure you mix thoroughly (about 20 seconds) after each addition. Because of the way the batter was, it took a few spins for the yolk eventually to break up. Maybe that is something that just happened to me, but it made me laugh watching the yolk spin around on top of the batter (hey, we bakers have a strange sense of humor, okay?)
With the mixer on low speed, add in three cups of flour, one at a time.
Once the base batter is done, you'll want to divide it evenly into three bowls so you can make your layers! To make the strawberry layer, you pour 1/4 cup of strawberry Jell-o mix into the batter and then mix together. Totally weird, right? I never would have thought to add strawberry jello mix to get that flavor (since I've never made a strawberry flavored cake other than boxed), but apparently that is what you do! I'm glad to have learned that because now I might make strawberry cupcakes with chocolate frosting one day.
I also didn't use the mixer to add in the strawberry and chocolate (which, it's 1/3 cup of cocoa powder to create the chocolate layer). Instead I used my awesome arm muscles to stir like a mad woman to make sure it was mixed well together.
Now, creating the zebra affect was a little complicated. Because I couldn't quite understand exactly how the original baker did it (maybe my brain isn't working), so I just kind of made it up as I went.
And then I baked it for about 65 minutes at 350 degrees. And then cooled for about 5 minutes in the pan and then let it cool all the way.
You're technically supposed to make a glaze. Which I'll be honest, I attempted. But it was a fail. But I think it'll be fine without it.
My friend Megan came over for a trashy tv night, so we had a slice of cake, some vanilla ice cream, and a glass of Biltmore Chenin Blanc wine to go along with our Sister Wives and Tough Love viewings!
Overall, the cake was very tasty. It was a bit gooey (but not under-cooked)...I don't know if that's because of the insane amount of butter, or because of the jello. But what can you do? Especially since I baked it a long time, and any longer it would have burnt. And the "zebra" look didn't really look....zebra. It looked more layered, but I was kind of expecting that. Maybe other slices will have more of that look to it. We will see. Either way, I liked it and the mixture of flavors was really delicious!
Also, on a side note, this happened today:
Just to warn you, don't drop your phone on the concrete. It may sound like a good idea, but it isn't. I really wish my warranty covered clumsiness. I might just tell people I was shot at, and the bullet hit my phone since that main part at the top looks like it was hit with a bullet.
No comments:
Post a Comment