White Derby Cake

I was recently tasked with baking a birthday cake, and the plan was for a vanilla cake for a two-year-old’s taste buds. After going back and forth on the icing options, I recalled that as a child in New Jersey my mom would take my sister and me to La Bonbonniere Bake Shoppe and we’d get our cakes there for special occasions. My favorite had a whipped cream frosting with fresh fruit incorporated into it, but that’s where my memory faded. Good ole mom to the rescue! A quick text message later and I learned I always wanted a Brown Derby Cake- a chocolate cake with whipped cream and fruit covered in cocoa powder. A quick Google search, and thinking “white” as a substitute word since it was a vanilla cake I was looking to make, and sure enough, there’s a White Derby Cake.

This is a perfect dessert in my opinion. A classic vanilla cake with freshly whipped cream sweetened with a little maple syrup and topped with fresh fruit. It’s WAAAAY better (in the healthy sense) than buttercream frosting which is all butter and loads of sugar. Sure, whipped cream isn’t the best thing for your arteries, but it’s not full of excess sugar as it doesn’t need to be to satiate the taste buds. Whipped cream doesn’t linger on the tongue like buttercream frosting, so you can get away with using so much less sugar.

Ingredients for the vanilla cake-

• 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1.5 cups organic cane sugar
• 1 TBS aluminum free baking powder
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and lightly butter entiredly and then line with parchment paper the bottoms of two 8×2 inch round cake pans.

Next, in your KitchenAid stand mixer, cream together the butter, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the eggs and beat until fluffy. Reduce the speed to low and beat in the milk and vanilla. It’s going to start looking curdled like cottage cheese, and that’s what you’re going for. Then, slowly add the flour until the batter is smooth.

Pour evenly into the prepared pans and bake for 30-35 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool the cakes on wire racks for ten minutes before running a small knife around the edges and flipping them out of the pans onto the wire racks to completely cool.

I made the cake the day before the party and let both cake layers cool completely before wrapping them in parchment paper and then plastic wrap to keep them moist over night.

A few hours before the party I prepared the filling- strawberry whipped cream with bananas.

I stopped by the local farmers market for strawberries, which I cut up into somewhat smaller pieces, mixed them with a tablespoon of sugar, and let them macerate for an hour or so. I had purchased two pints of heavy whipping cream, and used 2/3 of one to make the portion for the filling, which was then mixed with the macerated strawberries so it would turn pink and be sweetened by the berries.

Then I topped this layer with thinly sliced bananas.

I added another cup or so of the strawberry whipped cream on top of the banana slices and then the other layer went on top and I pressed it down to try and even out the filling.

I refrigerated the cake until just before serving to keep the freshly made whipped cream firm.

I whipped the rest of the heavy cream with about a tablespoon of maple syrup, and then spread it all over the cake. There’s a bit of a mound in the center because that’s the way I remember it being as a child. Thinly sliced bananas and strawberries adorned the cake to make sure you get a serving of fruit with your cake.

Enjoy!

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