POM for Mom

I wanted to make a sweet with the POM I received. The thing that is nice about using POM in sweets is that it balances out the sugar with its tartness. I used it before when I made these petits fours.

I made the cake for my Mom's birthday. My Mom is a salt of the earth kind of gal. She was raised on a farm during the Great Depression. She has a lot of knowledge about farming, canning, cooking and well my Mom is a walking encyclopedia- for sure. I call her with every question and every problem. Yup, I call her a lot.

This is one of the stories I like to tell about my Mom when she was growing up. Her and her brothers and sisters were playing out in the field. They were digging by a stone wall. Buried there in the dirt were some bottles. They took them out and were sharing a drink of the liquid in the bottles. These bottles must have been buried there during Prohibition. Well, being a tiny little slink of a girl, she became very intoxicated by the alcohol. They all were. Being so drunk and dizzy they were unable to get back to the house so easily. Luckily for them it was around five o'clock and the cows would be heading back to the barn for the night. So these smart children grabbed some cow tails and hitched a ride home.

One of my Mother's favorite cakes is Italian Cream Cake. I found several recipes and tweaked it to become this cake recipe below.
Italian Cream Cake with Pomegranate
Lori's Lipsmacking Goodness

the cake:
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
5 eggs, separated
2 cup sugar
1 stick butter
1/2 cup shortening
2 cup flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 easpoon salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine buttermilk and soda in a small bowl and set aside. Cream sugar, butter, shortening and salt in a large bowl. Add egg yolks, one at a time. Add buttermilk alternating with flour. Stir in vanilla. Beat egg whites in a seperate bowl and fold into batter. Line and grease two 9 inch round cake pans and bake for about 25 minutes.

the filling:

16 ounces mascarpone
4 tablespoons POM syrup**
2 tablespoons PAMA (pomegranate liquor)
1 cup confectioners sugar
the seeds of one vanilla bean

Whip all ingredients together until throughly combined.

the frosting:

2 cups whipping cream
1 tablespoon pomegranate syrup
1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin*
2 tablespoons cold water
1/4 cup sugar

In a small bowl combine gelatin with cold water and let sit for a mement. Then heat it in the microwave for about 30 seconds to disolve it. Remove and let cool to room temp.

In a cold metal bowl whip the cream until it forms bubbles, sprinkle in sugar and add pomegranate syrup. When the mixture is just about to form stiff peaks add in the gelatin all at once. Continue to beat until stiff peaks form.

*The gelatin helps to stabilize the whipped cream. If you are serving the cake the same day your really don't need to do the gelatin at all.

**Pomegranate syrup: combine 2 cups POM juice with 2 tablespoons lemon juice and 1/3 cup sugar. Boil and reduce to half