WIP Coffee Crunch Cake

I recently made a coffee crunch cake by piecing together elements of several recipes. While the flavor was great, the textures of the components clashed in ways I did not expect. I'm writing down the steps I used for this iteration, but only so I know how to make adjustments in the future. So don't try to make this just yet.

• The butter cake was too dense. Maybe I served it too cold, or was too slow to add the flour and milk to the batter. Might need to split the layers horizontally.
• The liquid-based cream melts the coffee crunch too easily. Seems I either need to use a butter-based icing, use only large crunch pieces, or put something besides crunch in the inner layers.
• I was pretty skimpy on applying the soaker, so it had no noticeable effect on the outcome.

Equipment

Two 8-inch cake pans, stand mixer, parchment paper rounds, and use a scale to measure!

Ingredients

For the cake

• I used a butter cake from the chantilly cake recipe but kinda regret it. For now, buy a chiffon cake from a bakery and use that.

For the coffee crunch

• 1.5 cups granulated sugar
• 0.25 cups espresso
• 0.25 cups light corn syrup
• 1 Tbsp baking soda

For the cream

• Note, there should be a little extra but you could make more if you definitely want to add a piping design.
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 12 oz mascarpone cheese
• 2.5 cups heavy whipping cream
• 0.5 tsp vanilla extract
• 1.5 tsp espresso powder for baking
• 0.25 tsp salt

For the soaker

• 0.25 cups espresso
• 1.5 tsp dark rum or coffee liqueur (optional)

Instructions

1. You can prep the crunch several days in advance, and store outside the fridge. Combine sugar, corn syrup, and espresso in a saucepan set up with a thermometer.
2. Heat on medium to high heat, stirring frequently, until temperature reaches 310°F (154°C, hard crack).
3. Turn off the heat and rapidly whisk in the baking soda, trying to spread it evenly throughout the entire syrup. You have to balance taking more time to mix the baking soda to all parts of the syrup with taking less time before the air bubbles deflate. So keep a close eye and move on if the mixture looks like it's deflating. I would estimate maybe 7 seconds of rapid mixing.
4. Pour the puffy syrup onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Don't pour all in one mound, but don't pour it too thin either.
5. Don't disturb the blob while it cools, about 1 hour. Then, cover with another piece of parchment and smash it with a rolling pin. Or baseball bat. There should be a mix of piece sizes, but the larger ones should be about the size of a quarter coin.
6. Mix the powdered sugar and mascarpone in the stand mixer with the whisk attachment. We want the cheese to lighten up and get evenly mixed with the sugar.
7. Add the vanilla extract, salt, espresso powder, and heavy cream to the mixer. Mix on medium speed until stiff peaks form.

/cooking/