When I need a cream cake filling I have a go to recipe that I use. My diminutive form saunters saucily to the pantry, I collect whatever pudding flavor I desire my cake's filling to be, add whipping cream and milk, and beat the three ingredients until I have a lovely floof of creamy cake filling. Here's the thing, I am almost out of cream, I really didn't feel like going to the store, and I am always up for a bit of creative kitchen concocting.
That said, I wanted a Bavarian cream type filling without all the time consuming steps, as today is my daughter's BIRTHDAY, and I might have a ton of things to do. (Shocking, I know).
So as I reclined in my bed binge watching Community last night my thoughts began to meander through the powdered sugar dusted portions of my neural network. This is what I came up with:
To start, because I am a super serious blogger who totally follows all proper food blog posting protocol, I laid out a few ingredients on my kitchen counter top.
Relevant Side Rant: Can you all believe the amount of pop up weeds one must wade through to get to a recipe in an food blog post? It drives me bananas to scroll through The Dead Sea Scrolls amount of information about people's cats, kids, predilections for toe socks, affiliate links, videos, and all manner of revenue earning detritus just to get to a recipe. I get it that we are all doing this to maybe make a buck on our hard work and information, but the standard food blog post has more distracta-sparkles than Anna Wintour's coat closet after a Lady Gaga record release party. It makes me crazy. So much so that I have thought about posting my recipes at the top of the page so that people who just want to cook stuff can easily find what they are looking for without getting carpal tunnel. If you give enough value to people I feel like they will support you, and gasp, maybe even read what you have to say because they like ya. Hmm. I got a bit tangetish there....Honestly, I would love to hear your opinions about the current state of food blog post composition if you have an opinion on the matter, if not, just skip this paragraph.
So, my goal is to keep compositional elements of my baked goods simple in nature, with limited, easily accessible ingredients being the start of the show, and utilize a method that doesn't make one want to pull out one's hair. Now don't get me wrong, sometimes I enjoy creating and baking a 38 step, two day brioche, but not every day.
That said, I laid out some butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and water. My goal was to create kitchen cake filling magic with just those four ingredients.
First, I boiled some water in my tea pot and kept it talking on the stove. Then I put the softened butter in my lime green Kitchenaid stand mixer bowl. The butter got to be creamed into submission while I did something completely bananas and slightly preschoolish in nature. I measured out some powdered sugar in a glass bowl and then I poured a 1/4 cup of boiling water over it.
Using a spatula, I stirred the powdered sugar and water until the powdered sugar started to look like a proper paper mache paste. Now, you don't want your powdered sugar/ water mixture to be runny, just slippery, so I added more water, a Tablespoon at a time until I got the right consistency. You want it to glide out of the bowl like molasses out of a room temperature bottle.
Once my powdered sugar mache had the right consistency, I walked over to the mixing mixer and slowly beat the mache into the creamed butter, a little at a time. To my surprise, my concoction was started to look very cream filling-like.
Now comes the tricky part. You want your filling to taste like creamy cake filling, not like powdered sugar goo. So you have to do a bit more kitchen crafting. I beat in a TBSP of boiling water, then I added a teaspoon of vanilla extract and 2 teaspoons of cold water and beat the filling again. All told I added 3 TBSP's of boiling water and 3 TBSP's of cold water, beating after each addition in order to get to the filling to the taste and consistency I desired.
I have to tell you all though, that I was mighty tempted to just have a Treat Yo'self moment and just disappear into my room for a bit of filling gorging me time. This stuff is like eating a buttery cloud of unicorn blessed cake floof of gloriousness. I am pretty sure I un-necessarily tasted the filling more than I needed to. You know, to make sure the sugar taste was beaten out.
The reason, as mentioned earlier, for this cake filling experiment is that today is my darling daughter's 15 birthday! I can't believe she is that age, and like all parents everywhere who are suddenly shocked by the age their offspring has attained, I uttered that statement out loud as I crushed my Pookus in a birthday hug this morning! So proud of her.
Anyway, a few months back I procured these disposable icing bags, a thing I have never utilized in my home before. I hadn't used them yet, and I must admit I fell in love with disposable icing bags today. I plopped one in a plastic cup for filling loading and smiled as I, for once, did not become covered in frosting or filling as I loaded a frosting bag.
Positive waves were emanating from my non frosting covered form as I proceeded to fill and frost my girl's cake. I must say, I think it turned out right nicely:
Faux Cream Filling
1 1/2 Cups of powdered sugar
1/4 cup boiling water (plus a bit more, I boil at least a cup)
1/4 cup cold water
1 cup of softened butter
2 teaspoons of vanilla (or whatever flavor you're digging)Place sugar in a bowl, and 1 TBSP at a time, mix in boiling water until your powdered sugar becomes slippery or paper mache paste looking. You want it to be able slip, not pour, out of the bowl.
Next, place softened butter in a mixing bowl and with a mixer, cream it well. Gradually beat the powdered sugar mixture into the butter until well creamed and combined.
Beat in 1 TBSP of boiling water. Then add and beat in 1 tsp vanilla and 2 tsp's cold water. Alternate adding 1 TBSP of boiling water, beating, then adding 1 TBSP cold water until the filling loses the sugar taste and tastes of creamy cake filling ambrosia. It took me 3 times of each to achieve filling greatness.
And as most of the time, all of the pictures, save two, were taken on the author's non frosting or filling covered iPhone. The other two were taken on the author's rarely utilized in blog photography iPad.
