Every so often, you're blessed with a coworker like Bryan Peach. Someone with the wit and intellect to make the work day more delightful. Someone who is not only good at his job, but who also knows more literary and pop culture references than the best hipster blogger. Someone who will continually slaughter you in Words With Friends.
Then comes the inevitable. He hands in his two weeks notice and leaves.
Jerk.
For his last day, I knew I had to do a special cake. After conferring with his girlfriend, we decided our best choice would be a Butterbeer cake. We're all Harry Potter fans and had to try it.
I found a recipe for Butterbeer Cupcakes on the wonderful blog amyBITES.
As soon as I saw her recipe, I was looking for an excuse to make them. But if it was for his going away party, I wanted to make it in cake form.
As usual, I bought more ingredients than the recipe called for.
Following Amy's recipe I doubled the recipe and made a half sheet cake.
It came out of the oven beautifully golden brown.
But when I turned it out on the rack to cool, it was only about an inch thick. So I decided to make a second cake (I was totally making this up as I went along).
While the cakes cooled, I made the butterscotch ganache.
Couldn't have been easier. Once again, I doubled the recipe.
I didn't have a double broiler, so I made due with a larger pot on top of a slightly smaller pot full of simmering water. Hey, it did the job.
I used Amy's idea of putting the ganache in a plastic squirt bottle - made it so much easier to handle.
While the ganache and cakes cooled, I whipped up the delicious butterscotch buttercream icing.
Then it came time to assemble the cake.
Amy used the squirt bottle to inject the ganache into each cupcake. So, how could I make that work in a cake? I ended up cutting each cake in half, lengthwise, and spread a small amount of ganache on the first layer.
I put the next layer on and spread icing in top, followed by the third layer and another coating of ganache, and, finally, the last layer of cake. I then slathered on the icing.
Yes, it says "So Long Girl Jeans". Don't ask.
I used the extra ganache to drizzle on the cake and down the sides. It was too good not to use.
The cake ended up being pretty huge. I didn't mean for it to end up that big, but I couldn't stop! It was dense and delicious! The ganache soaked into the cake and made it so moist.
Thank you, Amy from amyBites for creating this awesome recipe and letting me share it.
And thank you, Peach, for years of fun and laughter and some amazing producing/web work. Good luck in your new job!
(It's never a good idea to try and cut a thick, homemade cake with a plastic knife)
