Blue Ombre cake with Nutella Swiss Meringue Butter Cream

Ombre cake is a kind of white cake with layers of graded hues of the same colour and is usually joined together with butter cream  To make shiny velvety ruffles or roses as decoration outside it goest perfectly with the lush Swiss meringue butter cream. I tasted it and it's beyond divine. Honestly I don't think I will be willing to make any other butter cream any more.
I am usually sceptical towards cakes that have too much sponge and not enough cream so I did not expect much from this. But I couldn't be more wrong.

Food notes:
The sponges are white cake which I found with water and with milk. Better results with milk.
I had to adapt the original recipe increasing by half to achieve a 12 cm high and 8 inch wide cake. To get nice height with the original recipe the diameter of the cake needs to be smaller - 6 inches would work best in my opinion.
The texture of the sponge of the recipe I used was very nice and light, and together with the butter cream they made a perfect match - my only regret is I did not double the butter cream amount (I should have) and that I chose sugar paste for coveting the cake instead of butter cream - this cake just craves the butter cream  Any next time I am doing that cake it would be with butter cream on top.
The colouring of the sponges was a bit weird as the colours of the baked sponges are a bit different than what they seem like raw. However the best results of graded tones I achieved with silver spoon colours vs paste colours.
Colour wise - with milk an a whole egg the sponge is yellowish which makes it kind of green when adding blue colour - so I had to correct with a bit of red but the amount I used first was too much and it turned violet - not what I was aiming at.



The ruffles - quite happy with the shades. I had to use two shades of blue colour and each coloured sugar paste was "diluted" with white to get gradients.

To make them more wave-like I cut out semicircles from top of the sugar paste stripe (check tutorial by Bubble and Sweet) and then frilled.

Know how:

Sponge recipe from the Nasi Lemak Lover blog

Swiss meringue butter cream by the wonderful tutorial of Sweetapolita

Ruffles of butter cream from bubble and sweet

Ruffles of sugar paste from Bubble and Sweet 

 My Cake Inspirations on Pinterest 

Products:

For the cake:

For 5 sponges about 12 cm high

(recipe adapted from here)

makes five sponges, each bowl of dough weighs  400 g

532 g plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/2+1/4 ts. Salt

300 ml milk

2 1/2 tsp vnilla extract

525 g caster (fine) sugar

6 medium eggs

340 g butter

food grade colouring

several drops of fresh lemon juice - it is supposed to make colours more striking.

Method:

Beat the butter with the sugar and add the eggs one by one beating with the mixer at medium speed and the milk with vanilla.

Mix the flour with the salt and baking powder and incorporate with a fork or spatula.

Divide the cake in 5 bowls each should weigh 400 g.

colour it with the selected colour starting with the darkest shade.

I used mostly blue and a very little bit of red - less than one drop for the medium sponges. Add a ccouple of drops of fresh lemon juice.

Line some cake tins with baking paper and bake for 30 minutes at 180 C. Remove from the oven and leave for 5 minutes to come away from the rims of the cake tin. Then remove and leave to cool down well.

Swiss meringue butter cream blue ombre cake nutella dolphins fish ruffles

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For the butter cream

Swiss meringue butter cream

(Half of  Sweetapolita's recipe)

5 egg whites

250 g  caster sugar

340 g butter at room temperature

300 g Nutella

Method:

Heat the egg whites and sugar on bain marie - in a bowl over simmering water (the water does not need to be boiling just slightly simmering) and the bowl with the eggs does not have to touch the water. Heat slightly until the temperature reaches 71 degrees C. Don\t worry if using raw egg whites as this is the temperature of pasteurisation - the egg whites are cooked.

Remove from heat and beat with the mixer starting with lower speed and then increasing. 

When the meringue is not warm any more start adding the butter one cube at a time.

Then beat until in reaches the desired consistency and look. (Check the Sweetapolita post for guiodance).

When the butter cream is ready - divide in half and mix one half with the Nutella cream until smooth.

Keep in the fridge for a couple of hours and join the cakes.

Cover the cake and sides with the rest.

If using butter cream to pipe over the cake - the recipe needs to be double. 

Store in the fridge for 12 hours to harden.

Then cover with the rolled out sugar paste (I use Dr Oetker's Regal Ice)

My first cake of this type was this: