Whipped Cream Cake

This is probably the most basic and simple of the cakes I've made so far. It's also a cake that everyone just gobbled up. When I looked around the table after people were done with dessert, there was not a bite left on any plate. Nary a crumb.
The juxtaposition of the holiday pinecone cake and the whipped cream cake shows how eclectic Heavenly Cakes is. One is so elaborate, and the other could only be simpler if it were a cake mix. But both are good.

The cake is an oddity in that it has no butter or oil--just whipping cream. Rose recommends 40% butterfat cream if you can find it. The whipping cream available in the supermarket doesn't give percentages, and I didn't go try to cadge cream from a baker, so I'm assuming that mine wasn't 40%. It still worked, though. Just whip it, then beat in the eggs, sugar and vanilla.

It's nice and thick and creamy at this point. Rose says it will have the consistency of mayonnaise, which is about right, but I didn't like to think of it as a bowlful of Hellmann's, so I tried to ignore that description.

Then the flour is folded in. If you forgot to sift the flour, as I did, it helps to fold it in with a balloon whisk instead of a spatula, because that does a better job of breaking up the tiny clumps of flour.
If you read the recipe, you won't forget, because it says "sifted into the cup and leveled off." Because I don't use cups, I ignored the entire sentence.

That's it! That's all you have to do. Spoon the nice thick batter into some variety of tube or bundt pan. The lovely picture, which has powdered sugar drifting down on the cake from a sieve above, is a fluted tube pan. I can't figure out how I possibly missed adding this particular cake pan to my collection, so I had to use the one I bought for the Golden Lemon Almond Cake.

It works very nicely for this cake too. It looked pretty just out of the cake pan, but even prettier with a little powdered sugar sprinkled on top. If I'm not careful, I'll start sprinkling powdered sugar on everything.
Serving this whipped cream cake with more whipped cream does seem a little like taking coals to Newcastle, but it works.
This cake is like a pound cake, but it's much paler, almost white, because its fat content comes from cream rather than butter. The crumb is softer and more delicate than the heartier pound cake and, despite the fact that it's got more cream than you can shake a stick at, it tastes innocently light and tender. You could probably deceive yourself into thinking that it's a diet cake, and you could certainly eat two pieces with no trouble.

Because I made the pinecone cake for an office party, this cake was my actual Christmas cake. Often after a big dinner, no one wants to eat a rich dessert. But, as I said, everyone's plate was licked clean. They probably thought they wouldn't gain weight from eating this cake. They were wrong.

TASTING PANEL:

Sarah: "I love how buttery it is." [Me: "It doesn't have any butter in it. It has cream."] "I love how creamy it is."
Lisa: "It's fluffy!"
Jim: "Light, with good texture and flavor. It goes very well with whipped cream."
Dan: "It's good! Should I lift up my shirt and show my stomach so people can see how much I love to eat?"
[That last quote marked the end to any serious tasting panel comments.]