RLB Oblivion Torte help

[amccomb]

I read the RLB Oblivion Truffle Torte Demo and decided to try it for a wedding cake I am doing for next week.

Someone in the thread mentioned that they do a similar cake in thinner layers, then freeze and unmold and layer with a filling. This is what I had hoped to do, but I just noticed a note in The Cake Bible not to freeze this cake.

Has anyone done so and noticed a change in texture? If I can't freeze it, I'm not doing it. I am doing 10 different cakes for this wedding with 10 different fillings, and I can't face doing something only a couple of days before - especially something totally new to me. And I can't afford to do a trial run with 1 pound of chocolate!

If someone has tried it, and it worked out, I would feel better. I plan to layer it with bourbon cherry filling and stabilized whipped cream with shaved chocolate and ice with either a white chocolate IMB or a kirsch IMB.

[Sugarella]

Yes I've tried freezing it and yes the texture turns out icky and is irreparable. So I don't recommend it if that's what you need to do. Defintely not the best choice for wedding cake for several reasons.

I can tell you haven't tasted it yet because IMBC is definitely not the best accompanyment for it; ganache is, if you must have something.

If it's not affordable then do a trial run with cheaper chocolate, just so you know the texture and the way it behaves. Cold it's the texture of cheesecake, room temp it's the texture of pudding, nearly.

[therdogg]

I agree, no icing, it's hard to imagine as a wedding cake. Although there is the pic of the art deco cake where she covers it in fondant, I guess that would dress it up enough, the cake is intense on its own.

[maggie]

I've used that recipe for years, and freeze it often. It has to be room temp to serve, though. A wedding cake made of it would weigh 4 million tons and a couple bites layered with ganache could put Granny in a coma. I would suggest Susan Purdy's Mocha Fudge Cake from the original Piece of Cake. It's not in the new edition, The Perfect Cake. That cake freezes very, very well, is not so dense or heavy and is delicious. The ingredients are much cheaper, too.

[K8memphis]

My friend uses it for wedding cake with no problems. It does keep in the frige very well. It was on the menu in my ill-fated tea-room and it kept very well.

[amccomb]

I've used that recipe for years, and freeze it often.  It has to be room temp to serve, though.  A wedding cake made of it would weigh 4 million tons and a couple bites layered with ganache could put Granny in a coma.  I would suggest Susan Purdy's Mocha Fudge Cake from the original Piece of Cake.  It's not in the new edition, The Perfect Cake.  That cake freezes very, very well, is not so dense or heavy and is delicious.  The ingredients are much cheaper, too.

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The RLB cake would be room temp when served - I would thaw it the day before in the fridge and then let it sit out until room temp before the big event. I was planning to do two or three thin layers - basically doing 1 1/2 times the recipe and baking it in three separate pans so the layers would only be about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch thick. Also, it would be a satellite cake so it wouldn't be sitting on or supporting anything.

Can you tell me more about the Mocha Fudge Cake? Is it that same mousse/truffle consistency as the RLB recipe appears to be? There are four other chocolate cakes that I am doing (11 cakes in all - all with different fillings and icings!) - 2 each of the Double Chocolate and Fudge Brownie (woolley) cakes from the best chocolate cake recipe thread.

I was hoping for just one over the top truffle-like cake, and since in The Cake Bible, she mentions pairing the cake with whipped cream and brandied cherries, and those are specific flavors the bride requested, I thought to do something similar. I could always ice with the stabilized whipped cream, too, if an IBM would be too much, since each cake has it's own unique icing.

Maybe I should buy some Ghiradelli and do an experiment. I can halve the recipe, since I was only going to put half in each pan for a shorter cake, anyway.

Thanks for the feedback!

[K8memphis]

There's one in Nick Maglieri's book, Perfect Cakes, I can send yah...it's off to work I go right now though..can send it tonight.

[amccomb]

There's one in Nick Maglieri's book, Perfect Cakes, I can send yah...it's off to work I go right now though..can send it tonight.

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Oh, that would be much appreciated!! And it can be frozen with no ill effects?

Thanks so much!

[cyd]

amccomb,

Wow, 10 different cakes! Even though I'm sure it's a lot of work, kudos to this wedding. I did the same thing for my wedding, because I hate traditional wedding cake.

Anyway, I've made RLB's Choc Oblivion cake many, many times, and while I never froze it, it's really a snap to make. So if you really really want to make it, it shouldn't be a problem to make it three or four days beforehand. It will most definitely keep. The only issue is making sure it's the exact thickness you're thinking of, as slicing it horizontally is something I would never attempt, it's just that rich.

The finished cake will also give you more servings, because they can be very small, especially since you have all those other cakes to choose from as well. I agree with everyone else here about the buttercream though. This cake needs almost no adornment, even just a sprinkling of 6x would do in a nice stencil pattern. Although, I like to add a bit of acid sweetness, such as the played out raspberry or the brandied cherries, for color as well. I do coat with a thin film of ganache, just for a finished, glossy look, as the cake isn't shiny at all.

What other cakes are you making for the wedding?

Good luck!

-Cyd

[K8memphis]

My friend ganached the top of her torte and it looked so pretty. I just thought it was too rich for any adornment, like you, cyd, but boy it really enhanced the whole effect with the pretty smooth ganache on it.

Amccomb, didja get the recipe I sent?

Edited August 13, 2006 by K8memphis (log)

[aidensnd2]

If the wedding is next week you don't need to freeze it. You can make this cake well in advance and store it in the fridge. I've kept them for a week or so with no noticeable degradation of the texture or flavor. Just make sure you wrap it well. Although I've never tried icing/frosting/covering it I can't really imagine it. It's INTENSE as it is. Just a little whipped cream or creme anglaise, some sort of dairy to cut the richness helps out. I always liked it with anglaise, raspberry coulis and a few fresh berries...

[amccomb]

amccomb,

Wow, 10 different cakes! 

What other cakes are you making for the wedding?

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Well...most are just plain white, yellow, or chocolate cakes with a variety of fillings. Three are completely done, and frankly, I'm disappointed in them. The bride picked the flavor combos, and I think I just wasn't familiar enough with them to make it work.

Here are the flavors:

-turtle - chocolate cake with caramel and pecan filling, chocolate ganache, and caramel buttercream

-peach and honey - yellow cake (soaked with poaching liquid) filled with champagne poached peaches and royal honey buttercream

-bourbon and tart cherry - chocolate cake soaked with kirsch filled with stabilized bourbon whipped and shaved chocolate and tart bourbon cherry pie filling with white chocolate buttercream

-chocolate and pear - yellow cake (soaked with eau de vie poaching liquid) filled with thin layer of ganache, pear bavarian, and iced with browned butter caramel buttercream

-fig and plum - yellow cake (soaked with poaching liquid) filled with fig jam, plums poached in port with orange zest, cinnamon, clove, and iced with marscapone icing

-kiwi and ginger - white cake soaked with ginger syrup, filled with kiwi mousse, iced with ginger buttercream with candied ginger nibs

-chocolate and key lime - chocolate cake filled with lime curd and iced with key lime buttercream

-chocolate and cream cheese with kalhua - chocolate cake soaked with kalhua syrup, filled with chocolate ganache and cheesecake mousse with cocoa nibs iced with mocha buttercream

-chocolate and mint - chocolate cake soaked with creme de menthe syrup and filled with ganache and peppermint white chocolate mousse and iced with peppermint buttercream

-espresso and caramel - yellow cake soaked with espresso syrup, filled with caramel, and iced with caramel coffee buttercream

-corn and blueberries - cornmeal cake filled with corn custard and blueberry pie filling and iced with honey buttercream

The ones that are finished so far I'm not happy with. One is the fig/spiced plum/mascarpone. The mascarpone icing isn't very sweet, so I bet some folks wouldn't like it. I was going to add a spiced pastry cream, but I just didn't have the energy so I ended up just layering with fig jam and poached plums. I guess it will be ok.

The lime and chocolate is just strange. The lime icing and lime curd filling is sooo tart! I gues it's ok with the kind of bitter dark chocolate fudge cake. There was barely enough icing to cover, so you can see a bit of the cake here and there. I'm thinking of whipping up a batch of white chocolate buttercream and going over it with that, to both add some sweet to the tart, and the completely cover the cake.

The honey peach is such a disappointment. The champagne poached peaches taste like canned peaches, and the royal honey buttercream (from RLB) tastes like that whipped honey butter you can buy to put on toast and stuff. Plus, it was really runny and just dripped off that cake, and is a dark yellow color instead of off white. So, if I have time, I am going to scrape off a bunch of the icing and make a new honey icing of my own invention and try to cover it all up.

I am thinking if I get everything else done, I might go ahead and try three 1/2 tall oblivion tortes and just keep them in the fridge, as a couple of you guys suggested. Since I'm already doing her bourbon/tart cherry thing, I need to think of something else to cut the chocolate overload. I think I'll ice it with stabilized vanilla whipped cream to cut it a bit. Any ideas for filling? Raspberry seems overdone, but at least it's easy and people will recognize it. I know a lot of people like orange and chocolate, so I could do an orange curd, but I don't particularly like it.

[CanadianBakin']

Although you're not thrilled with how they have turned out so far I'm pretty sure they'll still taste better than any cake many people have had before. They will be a huge improvement over grocery store cakes as well as many bakery cakes. Don't you just love "brown" cake that gets passed off as chocolate?!

I understand your disappointment as I am a bit of a perfectionist as well but don't be too hard on yourself. Most people won't notice what you see as deficiencies.

BTW, I think the white chocolate buttercream would be a great addition to the chocolate/lime cake.

Edited August 14, 2006 by CanadianBakin' (log)

[amccomb]

Although you're not thrilled with how they have turned out so far I'm pretty sure they'll still taste better than any cake many people have had before. They will be a huge improvement over grocery store cakes as well as many bakery cakes. Don't you just love "brown" cake that gets passed off as chocolate?!

I understand your disappointment as I am a bit of a perfectionist as well but don't be too hard on yourself. Most people won't notice what you see as deficiencies.

BTW, I think the white chocolate buttercream would be a great addition to the chocolate/lime cake.

←

Thanks for the encouragement. I am a perfectionist, and this is a wedding, which means I am even more critical! There will be one cake on each table, so I am worried that the folks at each table will have plenty of time to see the flaws.

The bride understands that I am a home baker, and not a pro, and she even said she wants the cakes to look homemade, so I don't have to get the icing perfectly smooth, etc. Taste is what is important to her and they want people to try new things, and I'm sure a lot of these will be new to most folks! She decided she wanted me to do it because I am (in her words) "so passionate about baking". She was talking about white bakery icing made with shortening and powdered sugar and how she wishes there were other choices, and I started telling her about various other options, and she got so excited about them that she begged me to do the cakes.

I always say I'll never do this against because of all of the stress, and yet I do it again and again. At least I am learning and experimenting every time! Normally I do a billion test runs until everyone at work is sick of cake, but this time I only had three weeks notice and only two weeks of knowing what flavors she wanted!

[CanadianBakin']

You posted again before I added my edit so I'll add my edit here.

edited to add: I was just thinking about your project and thinking about how it could be easier. You might be doing this already but I'll throw it out there anyway.

If I was doing this, I think I would spend an evening making all the yellow cakes, another evening making all the chocolate cakes and another evening making the white and cornmeal cakes. I would figure out how much buttercream I needed and make that all in one evening as well. Scaling out the approximate amount for each cake and then just flavouring it on the night I was assembling that cake. Everything can be frozen at this point. Then on a particular evening you can just make the extra fillings you need for a cake and all the other components are ready to go. If you aren't doing this already I think you will find it takes a lot less energy. I'm guessing you are doing these cakes in addition to whatever your normal job is. I know that takes a lot of energy after a long day. Too bad one of us didn't live close to you to lend a hand. An extra person makes the job seem a lot easier.

[amccomb]

You posted again before I added my edit so I'll add my edit here.

edited to add: I was just thinking about your project and thinking about how it could be easier. You might be doing this already but I'll throw it out there anyway.

If I was doing this, I think I would spend an evening making all the yellow cakes, another evening making all the chocolate cakes and another evening making the white and cornmeal cakes. I would figure out how much buttercream I needed and make that all in one evening as well. Scaling out the approximate amount for each cake and then just flavouring it on the night I was assembling that cake. Everything can be frozen at this point. Then on a particular evening you can just make the extra fillings you need for a cake and all the other components are ready to go. If you aren't doing this already I think you will find it takes a lot less energy. I'm guessing you are doing these cakes in addition to whatever your normal job is. I know that takes a lot of energy after a long day. Too bad one of us didn't live close to you to lend a hand. An extra person makes the job seem a lot easier.

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So, what I have been doing is this...

First, I baked all of the yellow/white/cornmeal cakes and froze them (easier to torte them that way!) and the next night the chocolate (they take longer to bake). Then I made all of the soaking syrups (espresso, ginger, creme de menthe, kahlua), the caramels for various things and four flavored ganache (eau de vie, cognac, creme de menthe, kahlua). Then I poached fruit and made other fruit fillings (peach, plum, pear, cherry, blueberry). Last night I was running out of room in the fridge, so I filled those three and did the buttercreams and froze those. Tonight I am making anything with a custard - the silk meringue espresso/caramel buttercream (from RLB), the pear bavarian (RLB), and the corn custard - and assembling and icing those and freezing. Tomorrow I am doing anything with a mousse - cheesecake mousse, kiwi mousse, and white chocolate mousse. Then Wednesday I can correct any mistakes, and if I have time, bake the oblivion tortes.

Friday I'll take them all out of the freezer, clear my fridge and thaw them overnight in there. I'll fill and stack the oblivion torte and re-wrap. Saturday late morning I'll take them out one at a time and unwrap and use a hot spatula to smooth any cracks in the buttercream and box them up. I'll make the stabilized whipped cream and ice the oblivion torte, and box it up. Then I'll load up the trunk and back seat of my car and drive to the reception site - only about 15 minutes away.

Whew!

[StephMac]

Wow, these all sound interesting - I can't wait to hear how the wedding goes. I can just see all the guests wandering around to the different tables with their plates, wanting to try a piece of each (well, I know I would be!).

As for the chocolate oblivion torte - raspberry is very, very good with the chocolate. I usually serve it with fresh raspberries; the tart/sweet of fresh berries is really nice with the super-intense chocolate, and with a nice dollop of lightly-sweet whipped cream, it's fabulous.

If the bride is OK with "homemade" looking things, and if fresh raspberries are decently priced in your area, what about setting down a layer of fresh raspberries and a layer of whipped cream between each thin oblivion layer, topping it with more raspberries and leaving the sides uniced? The oblivion torte is always so un-cakelike to me, and this might be a neat way to make it look a little different from the iced cakes.

Of course, if the idea is to have all of the wedding cakes iced, then just ignore me

[*Deborah*]

The Oblivion is my go-to cake, I will make a 6-inch one at the drop of a hat, since once you get the hang of it it's sooooooooo easy.

I will add my voice to the others who say buttercream probably wouldn't be the best foil for it, definitely whipped cream. I usually don't even add sugar to the cream, just a bit of liqueur or Jameson's. It's heavy enough that your filling should be pretty solid, as well.

I've done it with white chocolate ganache and white chocolate fondant (for a wedding--nobody passed out in diabetic shock in fact almost everyone finished their generous slices, and several had seconds); finished in ganache; and just like it comes out of the pan. If you wait till it's been out of the fridge for a while, you can smooth out the top/sides to make it prettier. It gets shiny when it warms up. (You can also take the opportunity to do that when you warm the pan to slide it out.) I've never done a thinner one, but be careful of overbaking, take it out as soon as the top changes sheen. And please let us know how it went, as I am making a 6-inch recipe in a 10-inch pan this week, and I've never done it before !

Best of luck!

Edited to add a link to a pic of a shiny one.

Edited August 15, 2006 by *Deborah* (log)

[cyd]

Wow! I just looked back at this thread and damn kid, that's quite a job. When you first mentioned the amount of cakes it made me think of this one account I used to have that would order 10 different cakes, didn't care what they were, 48 hours and sometimes only 24 hours ahead! Given, there are pastry chefs on this site that probably do that thing all the time, but it was always a big job for me. I couldn't believe no one realized that I didn't just wave my magic wand to make cakes appear. The chocolate and lime cake definitely puzzled me, but then made me curious.... But tis the way of brides.

Anyway, just wanted to toss in my vote that you don't competely ice the OBL Torte. It just doesn't need it. Maybe just ice the top, or do a swirl for each serving. The crux of this cake is its simplicity. With all the time you have to spend on the other cakes, you don't need to spend too much on this one.

Please take some photos and report back after the wedding! I'm so interested to hear how it turned out!

-Cyd

[amccomb]

Whew! I worked on four of the cakes from about 7:00pm to 8:30 am with a short break to watch a taped episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. I still have four more to go, plus the oblivion torte.

This batch turned out MUCH better than the three I did Sunday, but still had issues. First, I had to create my own caramel/espresso buttercream because the recipe in The Cake Bible ended up being a dark tan/light brown color. My modified version is off white and still tasty, but it took me a few tries to get it right! The other problem with this cake is the caramel. It tastes great, but the cake layers kept sliding around on it, so I'm worried it will end up The Leaning Tower of Cake. Also, after I iced it, it sprung two small caramel leaks! Ah well, maybe put that one towards the back.

The second one also had issues, and I am so mad at myself about it. I almost had to scrap the whole thing! It was the turtle cake. The problem was the caramel/pecan filling. It was pretty stiff at room temp, so I decided to warm it up a tiny bit in order to make it spreadable to fill the cake. When I warmed it up, it separated and the butter was really leaking out! I got out my hand mixer and beat it like crazy and threw in cubes of cold butter trying to fix it. It finally came together, and it still tasted good, so I think it's ok! Also, when I made the icing, I cooked the sugar too long, so there are some crunchy caramel bits in the icing, but they taste really good and add some crunch!

The third one was perfect, and I was afraid I would drop the cake, since nothing else went wrong. That was the pear one, and I think it's my favorite. The icing is something I cobbled together from a few recipes, and it's sooo rich! It's browned butter caramel. It's so fragrant!

The fourth one was the corn cake. It all worked out, too! My husband thought the corn custard was "weird, but good". I liked it. I added a splash of bourbon, which I think really brings out the corniness. I was only going to use it in the middle of the cake and have blueberry in between the other layers, but I ended up adding the corn in the blueberry layers, too. After all, it's an interesting cake with a focus on corn for the farmers, so might as well use it up! The buttermilk cornmeal cake was nice and moist - I was worried the cornmeal would make it too dry. I used a honey buttercream that is much lighter and fluffier than the other one on the peach cake! I think I'm going to use it to "fix" the peach cake.

I was going to do the rest of the cakes tonight (cherry, mint, mocha, kiwi), but last night took so long, I think I am just going to make two tonight - the cherry and the kiwi. But I still plenty of time to finish the last two and fix the peach and the lime and make the oblivion torte.

Thanks for the support, everyone!