Poinsettia Cake
Planning tip: Bake and decorate the cake up to
3 days before serving. Store covered at room temperature.
White Cake
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter or margarine (not spread)
1 TBSP. baking powder
½ tsp salt
1½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract
1¼ cups granulated sugar
Whites from 5 large eggs, at room temperature
3 cups cake flour (not self rising), sifted before measuring, or 2¾cups
all purpose flour
¾ cup low-fat milk, at room temperature
Milk & Honey Frosting
1½ sticks (¾ cup) unsalted buffer or margarine (not spread), softened
¼ cup each honey and 1% low-fat milk
¾ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract
6 cups (a little more than 1½ lb) confectioners sugar
Decoration: green, red and yellow paste (icing) food colors
1. Heat oven to 325°. Lightly grease two 8 x 2-in. round cake pans. Line bottoms with waxed paper; grease paper.
2. Cake: Beat butter, baking powder, salt and extracts in a large bowl with mixer on high speed until smooth. Beat in sugar until pale and creamy. Gradually add egg whites and beat, scraping bowl and beaters once or twice, until mixture is fluffy.
3. Reduce mixer speed to low. Alternately add flour and milk in 3 additions each, beating after each. Divide between prepared pons; smooth tops.
4. Bake 30 to 35 minutes until very pale golden and a wooden pick inserted near centers comes out clean.
5. Cool in pans on a wire rack until cakes pulls away from sides of pans, 5 to 10 minutes. Invert cakes on rack. Remove waxed paper and let layers cool completely.
6. Frosting: Beat butter, honey, milk and extracts in a medium bawl with mixer on medium speed until well blended. Reduce speed to low, gradually add sugar and beat until fluffy.
7. Invert 1 cake layer on serving plate. Spread top with ½ cup frosting. Center second layer over first. Spread top and sides with l½ cups frosting.
8. Decorate: Using food colors, color 3/4 cup frosting green, 1 cup red and 2 TBSP. yellow.
9. Drop 3 TBSP. green frosting near center of cake. With back of a large serving spoon, spread on cake to make 1 leaf. Repeat twice to make 2 more green leaves. Spoon remaining green frosting into one corner of a 1qt ziptop bag. Snip off tip of corner and use some of the frosting to pipe veins down center of leaves. Reserve rest in bag.
10. Drop 5 mounds of red frosting near center of cake. Make 5 red leaves. Stir additional red food color into remaining red frosting to deepen color. Spoon into another ziptop bag and pipe veins down center of red leaves.
11. Use reserved green frosting in bag to pipe dots in a 2-in. circle in center of poinsettia. Spoon yellow frosting into another bag; pipe yellow dots on top of green.
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