I really dislike overly sweet desserts and over the years my palate has evolved. When creating desserts I come back to the concept and flavours of the dessert I am trying to create; working on letting the flavours shine without being sickly sweet. I have come to appreciate the sourness an acid or citrus can add, the bitterness coffee gives, and when talking about chocolate, I have grown to enjoy the notes and flavours within a good chocolate, rather than eat it for the sake of its sweetness.
White chocolate is naturally quite sweet. When buying it look for bars or drops with minimal ingredients, and those that contain cocoa butter rather than various oils. Good white chocolate should only contain milk, sugar, cocoa solids and cocoa butter; an emulsifier (like soya lecithin) is usually added too and flavourings such as vanilla enhance the milkiness.
If you roast white chocolate the sweetness mellows and the flavour is deepened, turning it into a rich caramel liquid. Roasting white chocolate requires patience; it takes about an hour in the oven at a low temperature, stirring every 15 minutes or so. It will look a little lumpy and chalky at first, but it then goes through stages of melting and caramelising. The result is liquid gold. If you manage not to drink it, put it in this cake, it is beautiful.
I’ve used roasted white chocolate in a simple sponge, added lime, layered up the baked sponges then coated them in a smooth and tangy cream cheese frosting. While there is a decent amount of sugar in this cake, the flavours are balanced from roasting the white chocolate, the freshness from the lime and the tang from the cream cheese.
The roasted white chocolate needs to cool a little before adding it to the sponge, but it still needs to be liquid. Make it in the morning and prepare the remaining ingredients while waiting for it to caramelise.
Once frosted, I like to finish the top of the cake with some freshly grated lime zest and grated white chocolate for extra oomph. As the cake is quite moist, it will keep well for a few days but it freezes equally as well. Freeze the sponges individually unfrosted, or ice the cake and cut into slices to freeze.
