Neapolitan Cake

Neapolitan Cake is an eggless cake filled with Cherry Compote and pink Buttercream. It is melt in the mouth delicacy which pushes you to go for 2nd, 3rd or more helpings.

Last year this time I was in hospital, recovering after the birth of our daughter. Time really flies! Our daughter turned 1 this week.

She has been an angel cum a brat in last 1 year. Everyone believed the elder brother will give her a tough time but seems to me like the opposite here. :)

Till now I’ve never made a pink cake but this time I fell for clichéd & wanted to celebrate her birthday with a pink cake. I’ve come across several Neapolitan Cake/ bars/ ice-cream etc on various blogs. So even I gave in to the rage &  decided to do a Neapolitan Cake for her.

I wanted to keep the cake small so chose a small recipe & inspired my filling & frosting from Sweetapolita. I did a pretty sad job of decorating. V pitched in and salvaged some of it. Husbands have their uses too. To give due credit he seems to have a better flair at it than me. :)

I customized the cake – used regular milk for cake & felt that the batter was too thick so added another 1/4 cup milk. I baked the cake in 6″ pan. I made chocolate cake twice to get 2 layers. I increased the baking time accordingly. The cake was very soft & fragile & I strongly recommend using a baking paper on top to un-mold.

For frosting – I substituted raspberries with cherries in compote as it is easily available. I really wanted to use fresh mulberries as they are in season but to rotten luck I couldn’t find them on the weekend when I was ready to bake. :(

I also added lemon peel & cinnamon stick to compote. The cherry compote was the highlight of the recipe. It is really worth licking off the spoon!

I also read in many places that to counter the sweetness of american buttercream, it is advised to use salted butter. I did 50-50 – half salted & half unsalted. But honestly speaking the frosting was not really what we liked as a family & I would stay away from buttercream from now on. It is too sweet & V absolutely didn’t enjoy the sweety-salty taste. I would be sticking to my tried & tasted whipped cream. American crusting buttercream is all the rage but somehow I think I would give it a miss. The only place where I would want to use is to pipe some roses :)

The cake was really nice, despite the sad decorating skills the cake looked pretty tempting. Taste was gorgeous despite the buttercream.

I recommend this cake without buttercream frosting, with just compote as filling & topping. Or using whipped cream in place of buttercream.

Print Recipe

Neapolitan Cake

Neapolitan Cake is an eggless cake filled with Cherry Compote and pink Buttercream. It is melt in the mouth delicacy which pushes you to go for 2nd, 3rd or more helpings.

Prep Time30 minutes mins

Cook Time30 minutes mins

Assembly30 minutes mins

Total Time1 hour hr 30 minutes mins

Course: Baking, Dessert, Filling & Frosting

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Bakery, cupcake, eggless

Servings: 6 inch layered cake

Ingredients

Chocolate Layer –

• ¼ cup unsalted butter softened
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup all purpose flour
• ¼ cup cocoa powder
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• ¼ cup apple sauce
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ¼-½ cup milk adjust consistency if required

Vanilla layer –

• ¼ cup unsalted butter softened
• ½ cup sugar granulated
• ½ cup all purpose flour
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• ¼ cup apple sauce
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ¼-½ cup milk adjust consistency if required

Cherry Compote –

• 1½ cup cherries pitted
• 1 cup sugar granulated
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• peel of 1 lemon
• ½ inch cinnamon stick dalchini
• 2 tbsp water
• a pinch salt

American Buttercream –

• 1 cup butter unsalted+salted
• ⅛-¼ cup cream
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 cup confectioner's sugar
• a pinch salt
• 75 grams dark chocolate
• few drops pink color optional

Instructions

Chocolate Layer

• Pre-heat the oven at 180 °C. Line & grease a 6" round pan.
• In a bowl, cream the butter using a hand mixer.
• Add in all the dry ingredients. Mix well. Add apple sauce, vanilla & milk.
• Pour batter into the prepared pan & bake for 25 mins. Cool on a wire rack.
• Place another layer of parchment paper on top of the cake & then flip over to remove from pan. Parchment layer will allow it to be removed without falling apart.

Vanilla layer –

• Preheat the oven to 180 °C °C. Line & grease a 6" round pan.
• In a bowl, cream the butter using a hand mixer.
• Add in all the dry ingredients. Mix well. Add apple sauce, vanilla & milk.
• Pour batter into the prepared pan & bake for 25 mins. Cool on a wire rack.
• Place another layer of parchment paper on top of the cake & then flip over to remove from pan. Parchment layer will allow it to be removed without falling apart.

Cherry Compote –

• In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine 1 cup of cherries, sugar, lemon juice, water & salt until they start to break down, stirring often, about 10 minutes.
• Lower the heat & simmer until the compote coats the back of a spoon, about 15 minutes.
• Remove from heat, and allow it to cool down. Remove lemon peel & cinnamon stick.
• When slightly warm, using a hand blender, blend the mixture till smooth. Since I used cherries, it was not very smooth.
• Stir in remaining cherries. Keep covered & chilled for 3 days.

American Buttercream –

• Put room temperature butter in a large bowl & beat well for few minutes till no lumps are left.
• Add vanilla, salt & cream. Keep the mixer going while adding. Make sure that they are well incorporated before adding sugar.
• Add in sugar slowly so that it doesn’t fly around all the time beating. Continue beating till incorporated well.

Assembling the Cake –

• Divide the buttercream in half. Add 3 Tbsps of Cherry Compote (1 Tbsp at a time) to one half of buttercream. You can add pink color here if desired. Set aside.
• Divide the remaining buttercream into half. Add melted & cooled chocolate in one half of it & mix well till incorporated. Leave the remaining butercream vanilla.
• On a flat base/ cake board/ turntable/ plate place a small dab of chocolate buttercream in the middle & then place 1 layer of chocolate cake on top of it, face up. Cover with 3/4 cup of cherry buttercream, leaving with about 1″ clearance around the edges. Now place a few spoonfuls of cherry compote in the center on top of buttercream.
• Place vanilla cake layer on face up on top and repeat with cherry buttercream & compote.
• Place the last layer of chocolate cake face down. Cover the cake in plastic wrap & gently press the cake with your hands for aligning the layers if required. Chill for 30 minutes.
• Remove from refrigerator. Remove the plastic wrap, do a crumb coat with vanilla buttercream. Chill again for 30 minutes.
• Cover the bottom half of cake (sides) with chocolate buttercream, top half (sides) with vanilla buttercream & top of the cake with  cherry buttercream. Pipe design as desired.