Schlemiel, schlimazel…schmoo?

I admit that I had to look this up – as a kid, I thought they were just nonsense words – but the schlemiel and schlimazel that Laverne and Shirley sang about at the start of the opening credits may be explained thusly: a schlemiel is a bit of an awkward and clumsy individual, the type who’s always spilling his hot soup; a schlimazel is the poor guy upon whom that spilled soup lands.

But a schmoo (or shmoo)? What you’ve got there is a delicious cake!

Full disclosure: although I live in the land of the schmoo torte, I’ve never tried it. The local grocery store bakeries don’t make it, and schlepping to specialty bakeries isn’t normally my thing. I had a pretty good idea of what went into one, though, and when I had occasion to bake a birthday dessert recently, I wanted to try my own twist on this classic. According to Wikipedia, it’s commonly made with angel food cake or sponge cake as the base; any recipes I found online, however, called for chopped pecans to be folded into the batter or else ground pecans, and that sounded too rich for my taste. Also, I’m not a fan of angel food cake. I know it’s supposed to be a virtuous dessert choice with its reduced fat content and light texture, but whenever I have it I feel like I’m chewing on a kitchen sponge. So, I went with an old standby:

Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. If you’ve been following my culinary adventures for a while, you’ll know that although I make a mean chocolate cupcake from scratch, a vanilla cupcake that’s as light, moist, and flavourful as my chocolate ones has been an ongoing search. These ones bake up perfectly.

I let those cool completely…OK, overnight…and then made this cream cheese whipped cream to fill and frost them. Yes, fill and frost. Hey, just because I wasn’t incorporating pecans into the batter, didn’t mean these wouldn’t be decadent as all get-out! (What, you thought I was going to use the frosting from the box?)

My cupcake corer is probably my favourite little kitchen gadget, and this is why. I made the full batch of the whipped cream, and I’m so glad I did. These golden babies were filled to the gills.

This whipped cream is seriously the best. It’s not overly sweet, but the cream cheese keeps it stable so that it holds its shape and doesn’t separate, and gives it a nice flavour while it’s at it.

Immediately before serving, I drizzled caramel sauce generously over those creamy white peaks and sprinkled chopped pecans over top.

The birthday boy (and everybody else) loved them, even those who aren’t normally fans of vanilla – always a bonus!

Thanks for looking! 🙂