March 10, 2014

White Chocolate Cake with Lemon Glaze


The majority of my household, myself included, are worshippers of dark chocolate.  Then there's my Dad - who loves white chocolate.  This is very handy as he voluntarily picks the white chocolates in assortments while the rest of us fight over the others.

The downside is that he always asks me to bake things with white chocolate and I always say "uhhhh...no."  However, occasionally, I acquiesce to his request and do something like this; a delicious white chocolate cake with a tart lemony glaze.

I'm so glad that I made this, because the cake had a perfect fluffy-yet-dense texture and the glaze complemented the sweet heaviness of the white chocolate so well.  Just make sure that you use good quality white chocolate to make this - David Lebovitz says that the only fat it should contain is from the cocoa butter and milk.  If it has vegetable oil, it's a no-go!  Mum bought white chocolate from Koko Black especially for this (it was worth it).

Recipe adapted from: David Lebovitz
Ingredients - cake (20 cm (8 inch) square cake)
150g butter
170g white chocolate
Zest of one lemon (alternatively, use about a teaspoon of lemon juice if you don't have lemons on hand)
150g white sugar
2 eggs
150g flour

Ingredients - glaze
120g icing sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 190C (375F) and line a 20cm square cake tin with baking paper.

2. Gently heat the butter, white chocolate, salt and lemon zest in the microwave, stirring frequently, until the chocolate is melted.



3. Whisk the sugar with the eggs (I did this by hand), then add the white chocolate mixture and whisk until combined.

4. With a spatula, fold the flour into the batter, making sure not to overmix.

5. Pour the batter into your prepared tin and bake for about 30 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.


6. Let the cake cool for a moment then transfer it to a wire rack to cool completely.



7. It's time to make the lemon glaze!  It's easy-peasy - mix the icing sugar and lemon juice together until smooth.

8. Pour the glaze over the cake, making sure to spread it out so that there are some sweet little drips over the side.




Then, you can either wait until the glaze hardens, or you can dig straight in and enjoy!