I know there are plenty of creme brûlée inspired cakes and cupcakes. These creations usually have some-sort of brown sugar frosting or sport sugar shard-like accessories. But I am talking about that signature “crunch” from a spoon shattering the burnt sugar topping and diving straight into a pool of custard goodness. Is there a way to incorporate that quintessential trait of a good creme brûlée in a layer cake?
I’m not going to lie to you. As it stands, this cake is pretty impractical. While I did achieve the brunt sugar topping I was going for, the crispy top makes in nearly impossible to slice. At this stage of development (how ridiculous does that sound? lol), I haven't quite figured out a way to keep the crunchy top while maintaining the integrity of the slice (sounding even more ridiculous now, haha). You see, the other main component of creme brûlée is creamy baked vanilla custard, so it was clear that the filling of this Pumpkin Creme Brûlée Cake should be pastry cream. Pastry cream is a pretty unstable filling, especially paired with this soft, tender pumpkin cake. So no, today creme brûlée did no “layer cake”.
However, I did give it a good try and I wanted to share the results anyways. I piped pastry cream on the top layer of the cake before blanketing it in sugar. I used a pretty heavy hand when adding the sugar for fear that the flame of my culinary torch would melt the cream underneath. This might be the biggest design flaw of this creme brûlée cake. The sugar did in fact brûlée, caramelize, and harden. Success!! Kind of. The crunchy sugar layer was too think. By the time I went to slice it, I had to shatter the top layer of beautifully burnt sugar.
The saving grace of this cake is the buttercream. It. Is. SOOOOOO. Good!!! In a way, I could have skipped the whole crispy sugar part and still gotten away with the “creme brûlée” title, because the buttercream is flavoured with a caramelized white chocolate. I used Dulcey 35% chocolate - Valhrona’s blonde white chocolate. I am not a white chocolate fan at all, but this stuff is seriously the best chocolate I have ever tasted!
And why pumpkin creme brûlée cake? Because Fall, obviously. This is a variation of the pumpkin pie cake in my book. I swapped out the brown sugar but added in a bit of molasses for depth and color. This cake is soooo soft and tender. You could totally be satisfied eating it all by it self. I definitely didn’t miss any extra frosting by keeping is “naked” either. This is the type of cake that doesn’t have to rely on buckets of frosting, sprinkles, or drippy chocolate to taste good.
Ingredients:
Pumpkin Cake
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon cardamom
- 1 pinch cloves
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup grapeseed or canola oil
- 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoon molasses
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 large eggs
- 1 ½ cups pumpkin puree
Vanilla Pastry Cream
- ½ vanilla bean seeds scraped out
- 1 cup whole milk
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar
- 3 egg yolks
- 3 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon butter
Caramelized White Chocolate Buttercream
- 3 large egg whites
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 ½ cups unsalted butter softened
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 oz Dulcey Chocolate melted and cooled
