Genoisery

Last week's cake was inspired by Ms. Tooknap's recent enthusiasm for and exploration of génoise. It was my first go at génoise, and I'm a tremendous fan.

RLB: "It is fascinating to compare génoise to basic butter cake. For the same size cake, the génoise uses double the egg, half the sugar, flour/cornstarch, and butter, and no chemical leavening or added liquid."

Génoise, once baked, is generally moistened with syrup, often something boozy-- RLB's recipe, reproduced endlessly in the The Cake Bible, is sugar + water + "liqueur of your choice." I, of course, opted for a sober syrup flavored with a vanilla bean & a generous plane of lemon zest. One could utilize liqueur to sober ends by simply boiling it in the water, rather than adding it at the end. Based on my limited reading to date, though, I'm dismayed at the lack of variety in the syrups recommended for moistening génoise. Exciting inroads into this uncharted territory are suggested by the syrups found in Ms. Tooknap's kitchen.

Last weekend's cake (constructed from RLB's génoise classique) is affectionately named The Uneven Bars.

The rectangular shape highlights the unevenness of my slicing and my icing, which btw is bittersweet chocolate Italian meringue silk buttercream and a bittersweet chocolate ganache that was meant to be whipped but which I overcooled and thus used without fluffing, an accident for the best as extra height would have rendered the cake too tall for m'dome. Either I need to embrace unevenness-- building it into the conception of the cake-- or work on more equal divisions.