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I made the 'White Mountain Layer Cake with Marshmallow Buttercream' from Bravetart by Stella Parks recently, and it did not turn out well 
The recipe stressed the importance of the ingredient temperatures, so I made sure that all my ingredients were at room temperature as advised. The recipe called for bleached cake flour which is not available here in the UK (it's banned in Europe) so I used a very low protein wheat flour instead. However, as it has not gone through the bleaching process I don't think it was a good substitution. The only other substitution I made was swapping buttermilk for coconut yogurt, which usually works fine. The cake was tasty, but had a gummy texture and was quite flat.
The buttercream was better, but still not ideal. The first part of the recipe requires you to make marshmallow fluff - and this stuff turned out really well. You then allow it to cool and whip butter into it. Again, the recipe specifies the temperature it needs to be, so using my instant read thermometer I made sure it was correct. It was light and fluffy, but tasted sooooo strongly of butter! I ended up adding powdered sugar just to help get rid of the buttery flavour, and the gorgeous flavour of the marshmallow was totally lost.
So overall, not impressed. It's disappointing because Stella Parks' recipes are usually really good! I accept that the cake being bad was down to my substitutions, but I had high hopes for the buttercream but I couldn't taste the marshmallow at all.
It looked pretty at least!
I'd be tempted to try making the marshmallow buttercream again and just not add quite so much butter.
The recipe stressed the importance of the ingredient temperatures, so I made sure that all my ingredients were at room temperature as advised. The recipe called for bleached cake flour which is not available here in the UK (it's banned in Europe) so I used a very low protein wheat flour instead. However, as it has not gone through the bleaching process I don't think it was a good substitution. The only other substitution I made was swapping buttermilk for coconut yogurt, which usually works fine. The cake was tasty, but had a gummy texture and was quite flat.
The buttercream was better, but still not ideal. The first part of the recipe requires you to make marshmallow fluff - and this stuff turned out really well. You then allow it to cool and whip butter into it. Again, the recipe specifies the temperature it needs to be, so using my instant read thermometer I made sure it was correct. It was light and fluffy, but tasted sooooo strongly of butter! I ended up adding powdered sugar just to help get rid of the buttery flavour, and the gorgeous flavour of the marshmallow was totally lost.
So overall, not impressed. It's disappointing because Stella Parks' recipes are usually really good! I accept that the cake being bad was down to my substitutions, but I had high hopes for the buttercream but I couldn't taste the marshmallow at all.
It looked pretty at least!
I'd be tempted to try making the marshmallow buttercream again and just not add quite so much butter.
