Bavarian Cream Cake

One magical day, homemade layers of chocolate cake and creamy something or other appeared in my fridge, courtesy of my roommate's church dinner. Maybe it was because I had suffered through consuming overly sweet icing from a local bakery that most of the world just loves (and I really don't understand—it's not made with butter, people), but lightly sweet cream opened a new world of cake combos reminiscent of trifle for me.

Within a week, I had tracked down the recipe, which turned out to be a combination of whipping cream, cream cheese and surprise ingredient brown sugar, and made it for myself with my favorite chocolate cake recipe. The recipe calls for refrigerating it 8 hours, but the longer you leave it in the fridge, the more wonderfully the cake melds with the cream, bettering with age. 

I also have this recipe to thank for inspiration to ice cake with Nutella cream. Maybe that will make it to the blog next, since all I seem to blog about is variations on cake these days.

Bavarian Cream Cake
Under the Sycamore Tree

1 recipe chocolate cake
1 pint heavy whipping cream
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
Chocolate, for garnish

Prepare cake recipe (either a devil's food box mix in two round  layers or this three layer cake from scratch) according to directions. Bake, invert cake layers and cool.

Place whipping cream in a bowl and whip using a mixer until still peaks form.

In a separate bowl, combine cream cheese, brown sugar, salt and vanilla. Beat until fluffy. Fold whipped cream into cream cheese mixture.

If you made two layer cakes, use string or dental floss to cut the layers in half, so that 2x2=4 layers. If you made a three layer cake, you can just make three layers.

Spread the creamy mixture on top of one cake layer. Add the next cake layer, followed by creamy mixture and so on until you have used all the cake and creamy mixture. Shave chocolate on top of cake for garnish, if desired.

Refrigerate cake 8 hours before serving so cake and cream can meld together. You can wrap the cake up in plastic wrap in the refrigerator to keep the cake from drying out.