A few weeks ago, we had a gathering and Piglet brought a few pieces of jackfruit cake (without frosting). Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough to go round.
When a birthday dinner was organized, someone requested for a jackfruit cake.
Jackfruit Cake
Piglet had previously baked it in a loaf pan and I baked it in a pyrex bowl. Sugar was reduced to 120g. We only managed to obtain 180g of jackfruit puree so we reduced the flour to 145g.
Piglet baked it in a 6″ circle pan.
It was wrapped in cling film and kept in the freezer.
Swiss Meringue Buttercream
Adapted from Preppy Kitchen
I viewed the video and made some adaptation to the recipe. To make the meringue more stable, 1 egg white needs at least 1/4 cup of sugar and 1/8 cream of tartar.
Ingredients: 2 egg whites, 1/4 tsp cream of tartar, 100g sugar, 180g butter
First step, wash and air dry + sun dry my equipments to ensure there are no oil residues.
Stir egg white, cream of tartar and sugar and heat it up over a pot of simmering water. The bowl should not touch the water. The sugar dissolved and it stop feeling grainy when the mix was 45C.
This is the best time to test out my new thermometer. That took me 10 minutes to get more than 70C. Mine went up to 73C.
This was the tiring part: to whip it to stiff peak using a hand mixer. It took me 25 minutes! I had to take breaks several times to rest my machine.
I’ve only started learning to do meringue 6 months ago, so I constantly refer to pics of firm peak and stiff peak when whipping. This video 0:23 sec has a good illustration to compare. One trick it to turn the bowl the other way round but it doesn’t help differentiating firm peaks and stiff peaks.
Butter was so melted after leaving it for an hour from the freezer. It does not help that my room temperature is 31C. The night before baking, I freeze 1 block of ice in an ice cream container. And it is a life saver. I did a similar ice water bath for my Italian Meringue Buttercream.
When to start using the ice water bath?
For the Swiss Meringue Buttercream, after adding all the butter into the meringue. And for the Italian Meringue Buttercream, a few minutes after adding the sugar syrup into the meringue.
Strong Jackfruit Flavour
‘Decorating it with complicated designs will steal the jackfruit’s thunder’. I do agree with Piglet as it distracts people from the jackfruit flavour. So no succulent cake or buttercream flower cake. Just a plain cake.
‘Jackfruit buttercream’ Piglet had requested it the buttercream to have a slight jackfruit flavouring. So I added a few tablespoons of buttercream of jackfruit puree into the Swiss meringue buttercream.
Jackfruit Puree
Piglet managed to purchase some fresh jackfruit for the filling at a nearby shop. Unfortunately this batch was not as ripe. It is the best to use overripe ones. After 30 minutes in the food processor, it still felt really gritty with hard bits. I moved it over to my blender and added nearly 4 tbs water. Glad it worked. While blending, I was thinking of other options: Diluting it, warming it over heat and then sieving it.
Piping bag
Used a circle tip piping bag this time so it will be less messy.
Jackfruit filling
Added jackfruit puree filling and buttercream around it to create a ‘dam’ to prevent the filling from spilling out. That will be unsightly.
Naked Cake
‘ A naked cake?’ That was what piglet exclaimed before I frosted the cake. He thinks it should be called skimpy or sexy because it is not entirely ‘naked’.
He saw several pictures online and commented that the buttercream layer on the side was way too thick. My solution to that was to crumbcoat it and leave it without the extra layers.
‘Drip Cake’
I was quite keen for the cake to have the drip effect. Most recipes uses ganache (either white chocolate or chocolate with cream). But I wanted to do mine with jackfruit puree.
To make it to a more gel like consistency, I added 1 tsp of gelatin and a wee bit of xanthan gum to about half a cup of jackfruit puree. Another option would be to boil it with cornstarch.
After putting it in the freezer for about half an hour, I had gotten the consistency I wanted.
I put it in a plastic bag, tied it up and cut a hole at the edge, tested it on an upside down cup and it was good to go.
Piped Rosettes
I added 5 rosettes using a star tip. There is only 3 in the picture below. I added another 2 later because it felt quite ’empty’.
How was it?
We served 3 cakes together (jackfruit cake, mango cheesecake and keto chocolate cake) and there were preferences for all cakes.
Piglet and I feel that we need to change the formula of the cake it slightly. The cake was harder this round as the puree was drier.
Jackfruit puree is added into the filling, buttercream and the drip topping. I really liked the jackfruit swiss meringue buttercream and the drip topping.
We had previously tasted the cempedak cake and the flavour was really mild. If we use less puree overall, the results might be more consistent.