White Gold Passionfruit cake from Roses' Heavenly Cakes

Here it is...so succulent and tasty! When I talk about the YUM factor, I mean this! A perfect example of YUM! I truly adore passionfruit and this cake has everything I love about it, tart, tangy, sweet, fragrant and tropical. What makes this cake extra amazing is the passionfruit yumminess is suspended in an ultra light genoise and iced in a sweet creamy white chocolate cream cheese icing! Oh my, just writing this makes me want to grab a slice! BUT NOOOO I can not! This will be presented at the Bakers Dozen meeting where the dear Rose Levy Beranbaum will be our guest of honor. So I must wait...must wait...
The recipe has several steps but the good news is many can be made ahead so you can get ready to assemble when all is done.
First you have the cake: Vanilla Genoise
Then you will make the filling: Passionfruit curd
Now you can make the syrup for soaking: passion syrup
And then of course, the icing: White chocolate cream cheese buttercream

I made of video of me cutting, filling and icing the cake so you can see that in action! But it may take me a couple of days to edit it and put it up on my you tube channel...it is the ichefany channel if you are interested.. but the ones I have done so far are on this blog for your viewing pleasure.

The cake:
3 Tbl. clarified butter, or Beurre noisette (browned butter)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1/2 cup fine sugar
3/4 cup wondra or *cake flour (I used 3.5 oz cake flour) lightly spooned into the cup and leveled off.

The recipe says to use a 9" x 2" round cake pan, sprayed with pan spray and lined with parchment. All I had was an 8" x 3" so I used that and it worked out fine.
Preheat your oven to 350F.
Prepare your butter, add the vanilla and keep warm.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, using a wire whisk, mix together the eggs and the sugar.
Set the bowl over a pan of simmering water and heat just until lukewarm to the touch, stirring constantly to prevent curdling the eggs.
Attach the whisk beater. Beat the mixture on high speed for a minimum of 5 minutes. The mixture will more that quadruple in volume and be very thick and airy. (A hand held mixer may take as long as 10 minutes)
Remove almost one cup of the egg mixture and whisk it into the melted butter.
Sift about half the flour over the remaining egg mixture and I used a silicone spatula, fold it in gently but rapidly until almost all the flour has disappeared. Repeat with the rest of the flour until all traces of flour have disappeared.
Fold the butter mixture just until incorporated. With the spatula, reach into the bottom of the bowl to be sure to moisten all the flour. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
Bake for 20 - 30 minutes or utnil the cake is golden brown and start to shrink slightly from the sides of the pan.  This is a delicate cake so avoid opening the oven until just before it is done. It should spring back when lightly touched and will not leave fingerprints in the crust.
Rose states: To prevent the collapse of it's delicate foam structure, while still hot, the genoise must be unmolded as soon as it is baked. Have ready a small metal spatula and a wire rack lightly coated with cooking spray.
Ok, this is ultra careful... I always take my cakes out of the pan 10 minutes after they come out of the oven and I did with this one as well... with no ill effects... however, I did use cake flour and no cornstarch so this could have given my cake a bit more structure.
Run the small metal spatula around the edge of the cake being careful not to cut into the cake. Invert the cake onto the cooling rack.
Leave the paper on and immediately reinvert the cake onto the rack so that the firm upper crust keeps it from sinking. (I didn't have this problem but again...cake flour)
The cake should be 2" high. (Mine was a little taller because of the smaller pan, not much though)

Oh dear gotta go to work now... I will finish this tomorrow, I promise!! Anticipaaaaaaaaaa....tion!