Everyone in my family loves s'mores. They have been a part of our summer vacations since I was a kid. So when I saw this pumpkin s'mores cake on the website Desserts for Breakfast, I knew it would be perfect for the Hub's January birthday cake. The author suggests using three 8-inch cake pans of which I do not own so I bought some disposable ones. In my mind I see this as a small tall cake, but ours turned out to resemble pretty much a 9-inch round cake.
The ganache was simple to make, the marshmallow filling not so much. After making the cake layers, you frost each layer with some of the ganache and I wish I had been more generous here, but it would have added to the weight of the layers and our final problem with the cake.
The instructions for the marshmallow filling are kind of vague if you have never made meringue this way. I do better with exact temperature. I feel ours was just not quite done although I thought it was "very thick" which is what the recipe calls for. You then spread it on a baking sheet and toast it with a kitchen torch (although next time - under the broiler) to get the toasted marshmallow effect of a s'more. Add that between layers and frost the entire thing with more ganache.
In all fairness, the recipe does say to serve immediately, but with other parts of the dinner to get done it was made about an hour ahead of time. The Hub didn't want more ganache on the sides. (I don't know why - guys are weird.) But I don't think it would have changed the outcome. So as we made the rest of the dinner, we got to watch our marshmallow filling slowly ooze out the sides. Oh we tried several things such as putting it in the cool garage to stop the slow steady march of the marshmallow but to no avail. When the top layers started to slide with the moving marshmallow we tried propping the cake server up on one side and then the other. By the end of the evening and the cake was served, I ended up using large skewers to hold it in place. Not exactly beautiful, but somewhat effective.
The thing is, there were five tasters for this and we all loved this cake. No one cared one bit about dodging skewers. I will make this cake again and hope next time it will come out as pretty as the one on the website.
Looks pretty in the last picture, even if that is someone deceiving. Glad it was a great cake for Pops!
ReplyDeleteDon't believe anything negative in this post. This cake was FANTASTIC and one of my favorite recipes so far.
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