unknown pleasures, a cake that taste like perfume
honestly, if a london fog was on roids this is what it would taste like. I think.
hey hi hello,
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And we are so back for the next installment of Eau de Gateau, or the little series where I make cakes that taste like perfume to see if what smells good together, tastes good together. And me oh my, today’s perfume does just that, smell good together and taste good together. I mean, all the of the cakes have been really good, but this one tastes almost exactly how the perfume smells, joining the special club currently housing Anabel’s Birthday Cake and Jazz Club.
We’re talking Unknown Pleasure by Kerosene, if ya couldn’t guess from the title.
By now you know the drill folks, I take the edible scent notes of the perfume and plug those flavors into basically my go to “cake formula”. For this one we’ve got notes of: Earl Grey tea, lemon, bergamot, honey, tonka bean, caramel, vanilla, waffle cone. And I get asked a lot how I decide where each flavor will find itself in this cake formula o’ mine. Honestly, there are tons of factors at play when deciding where a flavor will find itself in a cake. For these cakes I do try to have the cake open up the way the fragrance does. Unknown pleasures is sweet citrus forward, you really get notes of the bergamot, and then deeply caramel and honey notes really close behind. The notes are really well blended, while you can kinda pick out individual notes, they all come together in a cohesive way to create something new all together. That’s also how I like my cakes to come across, I’m throwing a lot of flavors down in these bad boys, but I don’t want you to expressly taste each flavor, I love when you can’t quite put your finger on something. ugh, yes.
Anyways, I look at the flavor with in this formula as anything in the filling being the star, the flavors I really want to pop will go here. Secondary flavors, will find themselves in the cake, as you each cake, that’s kinda how the perception of flavor leads you along, filling first, cake second. Then, I’ll put more of the supporting “roles” in the soak or the buttercream, the notes you don’t get much of and find themselves lingering at the end.
In the end though, I do have to think about the ingredients I have available to me, the form i’m able to find them in and where they WORK the best. As much as I would love to do a bergamot curd/filling situation, fresh berg is hard to find and when ya can find it it’ll run ya $15-20 a pound. So a lot of the time I’ll reach for Agrumatos Bergamot Olive Oil, which yeah still pricy as hell, but much more accessible. But, that can limit where I put a flavor. There’s so many ways the same 5 flavors could be used in a cake, for this one we’ve got a bergamot lemon chiffon, lemon honey soak, caramel earl grey bavarian and tonka bean swiss. But easily could have been a tonka bean chiffon, earl grey soaker, bergamot curd and caramel swirl with vanilla honey swiss. Earl grey chiffon, bergamot soak, caramelized honey pastry cream, lemon marmalade, vanilla swiss. so on and so forth. Do what feels right, and tastes better ya know.
ALsoooo, I did for the video add pieces of chocolate covered waffle cone to the cake layers. I also, did a fuck ass job. I knew I should have broken the pieces up smaller, for ease of cutting, but I was L A Z Y. and they ripped chunks out of the cake whatever, this ain’t a beauty contest, I’m here for flavor. I left them out of this recipe, because kinda unnecessary amount of extra work for not a lot of pay off so. yeah.
When it comes to decorating the cakes too, I’m often inspired by the way the bottle looks or the way the perfume smells. This one is sweet, playful and nostalgic as hell.
My cake style is just me having fun and is so so so inspired by so many other bakers, and facets of life. I was inspired by the work of friends for this cake. The thing about being inspired is you need to take what inspired you and put your own twist on it, carbon copies are boring and you can tell when it’s not from the heart.
I was deeply inspired by this cake by thu of nin cupcake shop
and the semi peeled citrus on this beauty by Bronwen Wyatt
But the final cake is still very much me, with little nods to the elements that inspire me ya know. Trying to copy Thu’s exact squiggle pattern and the way Bronwen peeled the orange? Well, it becomes rigid and forced. Just let it flow.
Anyways, time for cake xx