Hi,

I wanted to get some advice on a flavor combination, and on what type of frosting. I was thinking of making a Biscuit de Savoie, with peaches between the layers. For the frosting, I was thinking that honey would go well with peaches. Do you think this flavor combination would work?

This cake is going to be sold at a bake sale, so I’m hesitant to put any egg-based frosting on it due to uncooked-egg concerns. I was thinking a cream cheese frosting. How would I incorporate honey into a cream cheese frosting? I’ve seen a suggestion to replace all the powdered sugar with half the amount of honey (because honey is twice as sweet?). But much of the structure of cream cheese frosting comes from all the powdered sugar in it, right? So I’m afraid I would end up with a droopy frosting.

And if this plan goes well, I was planning on attempting a variant of Hector’s Mango Flower on top, but using sliced peaches instead. Will I need some sort of glaze on top of the peaches so that they don’t brown? Also, how does it work if the fruit flower is on top of the frosting and the fruit starts oozing juices? Will they just pool on top of the cake? I imagine they won’t get absorbed into the frosting (water doesn’t absorb into fat, is my theory).

Thanks!

-James

I think peaches and honey and cream cheese would be wonderful!

I think you are right about the peach flower—if they ooze juices, they will puddle.  I would think a glaze of maybe lightly heated, strained jelly would keep them from discoloring.  I can’t help much with the best way of making them so they don’t get ‘sloppy’ though from the juices.

However, for the cream cheese frosting, I’ve made them using cream cheese, butter and, in place of powdered sugar raw honey.  Raw honey is solid at room temperature, so the frosting doesn’t get overly soft.  If you decide to try it, look for honey that looks sort of like wax in the jar—it’s completely opaque.  Just heat it very lightly to melt it and add it to mixed cream cheese and butter to taste.  It will firm up as the honey returns to room temp.

I’ve also made it with ‘regular’ liquid honey.  I didn’t find it overly soft, but it is softer, and it remains soft refrigerated.  I used this frosting on this this cake:  http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/index_ee.php/forums/viewthread/2622/

It could also be very delicious if you put toasted slivered almonds all over the outside of the roll—peaches, honey, cream cheese and almonds—OMG, like a big danish!!!!!

Good luck!

—ak

The peaches will definitely start to water out the minute you put anything with sugar in it on them.  And if you don’t put anything on them, then they will dry out. 

A few thoughts:

-use fresh ripe peaches and glaze them lightly with apricot jam heated and thinned with a little peach brandy.  This will need a cake underneath it (no frosting between the peaches and cake) to absorb juices.  You’ll still want to place the peaches on and glaze them shortly before serving, they won’t do well sitting around for a day ahead of serving.

-make a peach puree and use that as a filling and possibly as a pool of puree on top.

-whipped cream can be stabilized with cream cheese, there’s a recipe for this in the back of RHC.  It may be lighter than classic cream cheese frosting and be nice with the light biscuit de savoie.

-You can use honey in the syrup for the biscuit.  I don’t have the book in front of me but I think that’s what the queen bee cake (Cake Bible) does. 

-It’s easy to leave the top of the cake unfrosted and then to pipe a frosted border and/or frost the sides of the cake.  I’ve sort of done that on this cake: http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/index_ee.php/forums/viewthread/3758/

Anne, Julie, I did it!

I ended up doing a honey cream cheese (using regular honey, not raw honey). In the frosting, I used vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract, so there were nice flecks of vanilla beans. I put cream cheese frosting between the layers and on the sides, and then made a peach flower on the unfrosted top. Julie, I did the peaches the day before serving and you were right, they ended up browning a bit. But the beautiful presentation of the flower made up for the browning. I made a little glaze using some lemon curd diluted with water, and brushed that on.

The cake turned out amazing. The flavors were great! This was my first time using the full amount of syrup that Rose recommends. I’ve always been hesitant to do it because it just seems like so much syrup! 2 cups of syrup in that little cake?? But it was fantastic. I used normal vanilla as my liqueur in the cake.

I actually ended up making 2 cakes. Whenever I bake for the bakesales at work, they always take my cake and auction it off. Which is great for fund raising, but it means that none of my friends ever get to taste my creations! So this time, I made 2 cakes, one for selling whole and one for selling as slices. The whole cake ended up going for $75, and the slices went for $3/slice and 16 slices per cake = $48. With my cake contribution, plus all the money I spent buying other people’s contributions, I ended up raising 9.5% of the entire bakesale’s income!

Here are the full details:
1 recipe Biscuit de Savoie. Used vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla, so the cakes had nice flecks of vanilla bean. I baked the batch in 2 9” pans. I used strips of tin foil to create high walls on the pan, so that the cake would have space to rise.

Each pan eventually became 1 cake. Each cake was torted into 2 layers, each about 1.5cm. Layers were soaked in a vanilla simple syrup.

Bottom layer was spread with honey cream cheese frosting (also made with vanilla bean paste). Topped with 2nd layer of cake. Frosted the sides. Arranged sliced peaches on the top in a flower pattern on one cake, and in concentric circles on the other cake.

Enough talking, here are the pictures!

And here is the one with concentric circles.

Here are some time-lapse videos of me assembling it!

Assembling peach flower
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c7LM1Kbe9Q

Assembling whole cake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxEBbRZf3zE

-James

Those all look great!  So glad it worked out well, I’ll be they were delicious, too.   That would most definitely have been my choice to buy at the bake sale.

Yes, congratulations!  It would have been my choice, as well!!!!!

omg James!  thx for bringing this to my eyes.  I LOVE IT!!!!!  the flavor combo is nice.  I wouldn’t worry about mouseline spoiling.  the FDA has posted that the 248oF syrup is sufficient to kill salmonella.  also, butter as well as sugar are preservatives!

answering one of ur questions:  apply equal weight of syrup to weight of cake (after removing crusts), as said on cake bible. 

the amount of sugar I would to to taste.

your peaches look fresh!  perhaps, like with pears, when you poach them it prevents from browning.

I really love seeing the mango rose made with peaches!

Julie, ur answers are great!