The Happy Life Cake

A healthier white cake with seasonal fruit and homemade whipped cream

Alright yall. Listen up if you want to read a story about the "Happy Life" cake.

I've made two of these cakes in the past month. I made Happy Life cake #1 (aka HL1) at like 12 am during a party in Doylestown, then brought it to Philly. I made HL2 in Philadelphia and brought it to a party in Doyestown where we ate it at 12am. HL1 was made with blueberry compote filling, and HL2 was made with fig compote filling.

This is .... a creative cake. No oil, no butter.

For the cake:

• 1.5 cup all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup whole yogurt (I used vanilla, but plain is fine)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp packed lemon zest (grated finely... about 1.5 lemons will probably do the job)
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup pear butter (or whatever fruit butter is fine... shout out to friends that live around Medford, NJ... I guess this pear butter is from there)

1. Mix well together the flour, salt, and baking powder
2. Whisk yogurt, sugar, eggs, lemon zest, pear butter, and vanilla until well blended
3. Gradually add the dry mix, don't over beat
4. Pour into whatever baking apparatus you want. Just make sure you grease it up with some kind of fat (I used butter.)

Here are some not-necessarily helpful quips:

• Ordered from most effective to lease effective pan lubricants: Crisco, lard, butter, spray canola, margarine, canola oil spread with a paper towel, olive oil, grease drippings from your cheesesteak.

• Note about pan choice: a loaf type pan would probably be great for this since it's a heavy cake, but I used two cake pans. The cake came out thin, but I didn't mind. This cake doesn't really fluff up a whole lot. I could probably change that with amount of levants and whipping the egg whites, but I didn't this time. Just a warning to any of yall who like vertically volumous cakes. Volumous is a word now.

Now for the filling:

Compotes are easy and beautiful to make. No seriously, have you ever watched a pan full of blueberries liquidize before your eyes? You've never seen a prettier indigo. The thing with compotes is that when you mix up fruit, water, sugar, and heat, you'll get a soupy, fruity sauce. Once you let it cool a bit, it will congeal. Why does this happen? Well, there's this naturally

occurring chemical compound in fruit called pectin. Now, honestly, chemistry was never my strong subject. But here's my best guess: Empirical evidence leads me to suggest that heating up fruit isolates the natural fruit pectin. When you add sugar, this must enhance the binding agents of the pectin, because fruits with low pectin require more sugar for jamming and jelling. Then, when the substance cools (and all the heat-energy excited molecules stop vibrating quite so vigorously) the pectin binds the molecules of fruit together. And wohala! Gelatinous! If anyone has a better scientific explanation, PLEASE comment.

Whoa. So THAT tangent aside, here's what you do:

1. Pick your fruit, and use about 2 cups of it
2. For larger fruits, slice and dice. For berries and such, skip this step
3. Throw into a large pan with some water. You're looking for a thin layer of water around the fruits.
4. Heat on medium heat until the fruit starts to break down.
5. Once the fruit gets kinda mushy, it's helpful to mash it up a bit with a potato masher or something similar.
6. Bring to a par boil.
7. Add about 3/4 c. sugar or 1/2 c. honey, and two pinches of salt. (For the figs, I used sugar and a drop of molasses.)
8. Bring to a boil. Let it bubble for a minute or two.
9. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.
10. Gelatinous fruit should be your prize. Watch this to understand how to pronounce "gelatinous"

Now for the composition of the cake, and the frosting:

1. Wait until the gelatinous fruit has cooled and congealed.
2. Layer cake with fruit compote in the middle.
3. Whip the heavy whipping cream in a perfectly clean bowl. You can do this by hand or with a mixer. If you do it by hand... don't stir it like batter, beat it like you're making scrambled eggs. Tip from a culinary friend says, 'you actually have to beat the air into the cream'
4. Once peaks have formed, either drizzle 1/4 c. of honey in and stir gently to blend, or add 1/2 c. of powdered sugar and stir gently to blend
5. Slather on the whipped topping once the cake is fully cooled. Keep in the fridge until you're ready to serve... otherwise any sort of warm day will melt your frosting!

Alright, and voila that's the happy life cake!

I have to admit, the first time we tried this cake it tasted pretty good (blueberry cake). But I made a few adjustments the second time (the plum cake), and I don't know if anyone remembers what it tastes like. Note to self: eat cake earlier in the night next party.

Obviously there was some alcohol involved by the time this picture was taken.