This Rainy Monday Cake makes a gray day a fun day! The white cake, is tender without being dry. The Oreo crumbs throughout the cake and frostings make for a discernible chocolate sandwich cookie flavor.
Sometimes, well more than sometimes, I feel down, like a never ending case of the Mondays. This Rainy Monday Cake is a more pleasant expression of my not so happy days.
Most of the times, heck, more like 95% of the time I’m sick of the saccharine dialogue that comes with blogging. This white-washed dialogue is even too much for my gluclose-jaded tolerance. We try to ameliorate these imperfections through a medium on contrite neutrality. Talking about the ‘hubby’ or something mundane in some casual snarky manner making the writer personable. I can’t pretend I have such a desirable life. I’m typing into the internet in hopes of a profession (not in blogging, but in other food media avenues).
It’s hopeless, I know. My attempts at getting my foot in the door are annoying and desperate. And I am persistently annoying, but what else is there to do? I can only move forward and receive opportunity with hard work and persistence. That’s all, rant over.
Now back to cake!
This recipe works because of the correct ratio of ingredients. At a certain point, most cakes, more or less, have the same ingredients. A good cake really comes down to the right ratios of wet and dry ingredients.
Here tenderness comes from the cake flour, while the egg whites plus one egg provides structure that the cake flour lacks. Sour cream and whole milk inject the moisture and creaminess that egg whites fail to have.
The frosting is butter forward in flavor. Whipping the heck out of the frosting cuts back on the sweetness.
The top layer of cloudy gray frosting uses equal ratios of butter and shortening. The shortening provides needed structure to maintain those fluffy rounded shapes. To get those rounded shapes, I used an ice cream scoop to apply the frosting.
Why Rainy Monday Cake? This cake represents those gray Mondays, deary and uninspiring. It reminds me of the movie Office Space. Yet for me, I find myself feeling like I’m chronically having a case of the Mondays. Rainy Mondays make me want to hibernate like a bear. Just wake me up when winter is over.
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- For the Gray Day Cake:
- 3 ¾ cups cake flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 ½ teaspoons fine salt
- 1 cup (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 ½ cups granulated sugar
- 6 large egg whites plus 1 large egg, room temperature
- ¾ cup full-fat sour cream
- 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
- 1 ½ cups whole milk
- black food gel
- 1 ¼ cup ground Oreos
- 12 Oreos, broken into quarters
- For the Feeling Blue Frosting:
- 1 ½ cups (3 sticks, 12 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
- 8 ½ cups powdered sugar, sifted
- 1/3 cup heavy cream
- 1 ½ tablespoons vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon fine salt
- blue food gel
- 1 cup ground Oreos
- For the Cloudy Frosting:
- ½ cup (1 stick, 4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
- ½ cup shortening
- 3 ½ cups powdered sugar, sifted
- ¼ cup heavy cream
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon fine salt
- black food gel
- 1 ½ cups ground Oreos
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 3 8-inch cake pans with baking spray, set aside.
- Whisk cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
- Beat butter in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment on high for 1 minute. Add sugar and raise speed, beating for 2 minutes. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl down as needed.
- Add egg whites and beat for an additional 2 minutes, scraping the bowl when needed.
- Mix in sour cream and vanilla, followed by dry ingredients, beating until just combined. Add milk in a slow steady stream followed by the black food gel. Add in ground and quartered Oreos. Use a rubber spatula to thoroughly scrape the sides and mix the batter.
- Divide batter between pans and back for 25 to 35 minutes, rotating halfway. A toothpick inserted should come out clean or with a few moist crumbs. Allow cakes to cool in pans for 5 minutes, before inverting them onto a wire rack to cool completely.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat butter on medium-high speed until, fluffy and pale in color, about 3 minutes. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl. Add the powdered sugar, followed by the cream, vanilla, salt, and blue gel. Raise speed for high and beat for another 2 to 3 minutes. Beat in ground Oreos, mixing to combine. Don’t over beat the Oreo crumbs. Refrigerate until ready to use.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat butter and shortening on medium-high speed until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add powdered sugar, cream, vanilla, salt, and black food gel. Raise speed to high and beat to combine. Scrape the bowl as needed. Beat in Oreo crumbs.
- Spoon a bit of frosting onto a cake board. Secure the first cake layer and apply some of the Feeling Blue Frosting, apply the second layer and repeat. Top with the final third layer. Do a crumb coat, chill for 10 minutes, and do a final thicker coat of Feeling Blue Frosting. Apply a thin layer of Cloudy Frosting onto top of cake. Use an ice cream scoop for apply frosting in a circular formation.