So apparently, naked cakes are a thing, right? There is something extremely beautiful in the simplicity of their looks. In fact, naked cakes are one of the easiest cakes to make. They don’t need to look perfect and can handle a bit of messiness. Or clumsiness. So, ideal for me.
And yet, up until now, I have not yet attempted the making of a naked cake. Not that it seemed complicated, I guessed it probably wasn’t. But there was just something holding me back.
So when the opportunity presented itself to spend an evening at a cooking academy learning all about naked cakes, I just had to take it.
I joined a party of about 10 fellow enthusiasts at a cooking class at Akademija Jezeršek (Slovenia). The class was led by the talented Urša @Cukerčki. When we entered, there were our stations already awaiting us:
It was my first time actually working in a professional kitchen, and I was giddy with joy. I mean, how cool is this?
Urša has already pre-baked our sponge cakes, so as to save time, but she did show us how to make them.
Then we were making a ton of strawberry cream and finally got to the assembling and decorating part.
We were making a Chocolate cake with Buttercream and Strawberry Cream filling, with the option of topping it with chocolate ganache. We sliced our cake into 3 parts, soaked the sponge cake and started with the buttercream.
If you’ve never heard of buttercream before, it is basically butter and sugar whisked together in a calory bomb. Personally, I find it way too sweet and didn’t care much for it, but it was fun learning how to do it. Then we filled a layer with strawberry cream and repeated.
It was fun learning about the little tricks you never think about, and I especially liked watching how each of us decorated our cake differently. I chose to spread my cake with the strawberry cream, instead of buttercream, and top with chopped pistachios, strawberries, and flowers. I made a mistake when cutting into my cake, so it turned out a bit wobbly. But, never mind, it’s the taste that counts. Here’s my final result:
It does kind of look like something out of a flower shop, don’t you think?
When I brought the cake home, it didn’t take long for us to dive into it. Luckily, the cake was small-ish (fi 20) and a bit on the sweet side, so we didn’t finish it all that evening. But the cake did not last very long 🙂
So that was my fun evening spent making cakes. I hope I’ll soon take the knowledge I gained and make more beautiful naked cakes 🙂
