Hi,
For my strawberry and whipped cream topped golden butter cream cake that I’m making for Saturday I wanted to try out a simple syrup on the cake layers.  When I used this cake layer to make an Easter bunny cake some people commented that it wasn’t as moist as they would have liked.  I loved it, but regardless, there is some pressure to moisten this amazing butter cake.  So I was going to make the butter cake Friday night and I was thinking about making a solution of 1/2 water and 1/2 sugar and brushing it on both layers before I wrap them up and store the layers at room temperature overnight.  Is this blasphemy?  Will it do anything?

Thanks!

John

John,
I think there’s fine line between ‘moist’ and ‘soggy’. It’s hard to tell where that line is until you cut and serve it, but brushing as opposed to sprinkling should help you control the amount. You might try brushing the syrup while the layer is on the scale to see just how much is being absorbed. You might post a question on the main blog asking Rose if there’s a rule about how much syrup in weight a layer should absorb before becoming syrup-logged.

For large cakes I almost always syrup.  A dry cake, no matter how flavourful is not well received.  I too, don’t care for a wet cake.  When I made a 14” round 2 layer cake, I recall using the syrup as indicated by Rose.  I will often reduce this amount if I feel it’s getting too “wet” for my liking.  In TCB, Rose suggests “3 cups of syrup for every 6 1/2 cups of sugar to prepare the cake batter”  this is from her wedding cake section.  Her sugar syrup proportions are in there too.  It will, btw, make a difference.

Rose uses roughly double the amount of water to the amount of sugar by mass.

I hear you about some finding this cake a little dry.  That’s why I love pairing it with the strawberry puree.  If you decide to syrup it, consider making the sugar %  the same as the cake so you don’t make it too sweet with the syrup (unless you like it a little sweeter).  This cake is almost 24% sugar by weight, so that would mean having the sugar in your syrup 24% of the total weight of sugar + water.

Hope you’ll post pics!