The following day I worked on the buttercream and filling. I used the Swiss Method of making buttercream which involves adding soft butter to Swiss Meringue. I found this method to be very easy compared to other buttercream methods and the result was perfect, even on a humid summer day. Here's the recipe, which came from my best pastry baking book, The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg.
Swiss Meringue
2c egg whites
1lb 4oz granulated sugar
Combine the sugar and egg whites in a mixing bowl and place over simmering water. Whisk continuously to keep the egg whites from cooking, heat until 140 degrees Fahrenheit. This pasteurizes the egg whites. Remove from heat and either keep stirring or transfer to a cool bowl (in my case the mixing bowl to my kitchen-aid). Whip on high until completely cool.
I added a quarter teaspoon meringue powder to stabilize.
Swiss Buttercream
One recipe Swiss Meringue
2 lbs soft butter
10 oz soft vegetable margarine
(I always use Earth Balance Buttery Spread.)
2 tsp vanilla extract
(I substituted lemon extract.)
Add the butter a bit at a time, keep the mixer speed on medium high, letting each chunk incorporate before adding another. Since it is summer I added 1 lb completely soft, room temperature butter first, then the earth balance, also room temperature, however, the second lb of butter was soft, but still a touch cool. This did well to compensate for the overly soft room temperature state of butter in the summertime.
For the blueberry filling I used fresh organic blueberries and a standard filling recipe. I let the blueberry filling set for another day until it was time to pull out the separate parts and construct. I started by shaving off the brown bits and rounding out the cake blanks. Then I brushed a bit of lemon flavored simple syrup on the blanks to moisten them. I piped a border to hold the filling inside and then plopped the top layer on and iced the outside of the cake. 
I was excited to finish, so I just went ahead with decorating the top of the cake without refrigerating first, so my mistakes were harder to cover up. It's so much easier to decorate a cake if the initial buttercream coating is refrigerated first, so it hardens up. You can literally just pick off a mislaid blob of pastry bag spooge without ruining your meticulously smooth canvas. I wanted to use more of the blueberry filling, so I tried to come up with a creative way to put it on top of the cake.
There I am in all my pajama-ed splendor! I literally jumped out of bed and started cake decorating. The blueberry filling was hard to pipe without making a mess, and they certainly aren't perfect circles, but Andris said they look like blueberries, so I guess it worked out. All I need now is a cake stand. I am just using a plastic lazy susan to turn the cake, but I don't like how I have to hunch over to see what I'm doing. For anyone looking for a good birthday or christmas present idea, this Ateco Cake Stand would be nice! (I'm not even expecting anyone to actually read this far. Hopefully luring you in with these pictures is working.)
In case you were wondering, no, we didn't have cake for breakfast. We had fried egg sandwiches on honey wheat whole grain bread with lettuce, spinach and tomato. (Important clarification: Andris did not have the tomato because he doesn't like tomatoes.) (How can people NOT LIKE tomatoes?) (I mean, they are so delicous!) (Especially when they were picked from your very own organic yard garden!) We also ate a half of a granny smith apple each and drank some water. We watched a few episodes from season one of Spongebob Squarepants while letting the cake set in the fridge, even though it seemed like Andris was disappointed to have to wait! (>.<)
The cutting of a cake is always a momentous occasion whether on a wedding day or not. It seems kind of silly that I put three days worth of effort into perfecting the various mixtures of butter, egg and sugar to have them all end up in the same place eventually. (The toilet?) I wonder how "bad for you" cake really is. There is a ton of fat and calories, and enough sugar to fuel a Boeing 747 at least from LA to NY. I mean, it can't be that bad, right? Which poses the question to us, how are we going to change our lifestyle and eating habits in the wake of a juice fast? It's a predicament. We definitely love to bake and create things in the kitchen.
We are enjoying the discoveries we have made with our vitamix about how to incorporate raw veggies and fruits into our dinners and lunches. The juice fast helped to retrain our tastebuds. We crave our veggies now, too. Just as we crave our sweets. We decided to continue to eat lots of raw veggies and treat ourselves to richer foods in much more strict moderation. Look at how happy we look eating our slices of cake! You know what both of us did after eating that cake? Fell asleep. That's right! Fell right asleep. And I can tell you I can still feel that buttercream slithering through my digestive system.
When we were on the juice fast, the last few days, we wanted to start introducing whole foods back in, to ease the transition. Instead of drinking dinner, we made some raw meals using only fruits and veggies, including a curry made of vegetable puree with curry spice. Those raw veg dinners never made me fall asleep, in fact, I felt energized, light on my feet and ready to tackle another project before bed. The amount of caloric energy in that piece of cake I ate today could probably heat an igloo for a week. I definitely won't need to eat much else to keep me on my toes today, except maybe for some cruciferous vegetables to help boost my metabolism and cleanse my colon! Well, enough of this, I'm off to weed the garden and plant some spinach! Cheers!
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