Easy Cake Decorating Ideas: Ladybird Cake

One of the first baking books I ever got was called Tule mukaan (Come along!). Recently, as I was going through it I saw that I had marked some of the recipes with a mysterious "B" - and I suddenly remembered that it stood for Birthday - things I wanted to serve at my birthday party. (Which I never did - my Mom would always bake her traditional cream cake - not bad, either!)

Among the recipes marked with "B", there was this ladybird cake. Back in those days, there wasn't coloured marzipan available, so the recipe tells you how to colour marzipan with red food colour, only available at the pharmacy back then. Maybe that's one of the reasons I never actually baked the cake myself...

Now the same cake was the first thing my kids wanted to try out from that book. They don't like marzipan, so we opted for red sugar mass - but I'd definitely use marzipan if I was only baking for myself. The cake tasted surprisingly good: fresh and tasty. Too often, this kind of cakes are just too sweet to my taste, but not this one! As far as I know, ladybirds don't have tails, but we had to add one more lolly so that all the three kids would have a lolly of their own.

For one cake you need:

• 4 eggs


• 100ml sugar


• 150ml all-purpose flour ( I used 1/3 whole-grain)


• 1 tsp baking powder

 

For the filling:

• 100ml heavy cream


• 100ml apple sauce (not too sweet)


• 1tsp vanilla sugar

 

For the topping:

• 100ml apple sauce


• one package of red sugar mass (I didn't take the reference of how many grams that was...)


• 2 liquorice bars, cut in 1cm pieces


• 2 lollipops (we had to use 3 - see above)

 

• Plus about 150ml milk for the moistening of the cake

This is how to do it:

Preheat the oven to 175C. Beat the eggs and sugar in a baking bowl and add sifted flour in which you've added the baking powder. Stir gently with a wooden spoon until the flour is well combined with the rest. Pour the batter in a round cake form and bake until golden brown, or some 15 minutes.

In the meantime, beat the cream until soft peaks form. Add vanilla sugar and the apple puree into the cream.

When the cake is well baked, remove it from the oven and let cool, then remove from the form and cut horizontally into two pieces either using a sharp knife or a string.

Place the bottom half on a serving plate. Moisten with about 75ml milk. Spread the cream-apple-filling on the bottom half, then place the upper half on top and moisten with the rest of the milk. Spread the 100ml apple puree on top.

Roll the sugar mass (or marzipan) between two layers of cling film into a disc just a bit bigger than the cake's diameter. Place the disc carefully on top of the cake and fold to cover the sides as well. Decorate your ladybird with the liquorice bar pieces (the dots) and lollies (the antennas).

I bet the cake gets even better if you let in stand in the fridge overnight. We had to eat it right away, though, so I can't tell for sure...!

P.S. In the original recipe, the middle part of the cake was cut out to make the ladybird oval instead of round. We didn't do that - we preferred to have a bigger cake ;)

 

Apfelstrudel, or Apples the Austrian Way

During the past few weeks, I’ve been drowning in apples. And I’m not the only one – it’s been (and still is) an incredibly good apple season in Finland!

But what to do with these huge amounts of malus domestica? I’ve already pureed several kilos of them, I’ve made Tarte Tatins and other apple pies, and there’s still a lot left!

Then it struck me that I’ve actually never tried to make the iconic Austrian apple dessert, Apfelstrudel, at home. So I did some research and started working! After one not-so-well-succeeded attempt, I found the perfect recipe. My starting point was this one from chefkoch.de.

Note that it’s important NOT to peel the apples. If you do, you end up losing a lot of the taste. You'll need a bit less than 1kg of apples to get 800g of sliced apples.

This recipe yields two strudels, each one enough to feed about 6 people. If you want to make only one strudel, I suggest you make one portion of dough anyway: keep half of it in the fridge, because you the most certainly will want to make another one SOON!

Dough:

• 50g whole-grain spelt or wheat flour


• 200g all-purpose flour


• 2g salt


• 1 egg


• 20g neutral-tasting oil (sunflower, for example)


• 100ml warm water

Filling:

• 800g apples, unpeeled but cores removed, sliced very thin


• 100g butter, divided


• 100g breadcrumbs


• 140g sugar


• 170g raisins


• zest of one organic lemon


• 8g cinnamon

Plus about 300ml neutral-tasting oil for the oil bath (see the recipe)

This is how to do it:

First, prepare the dough. Combine flour and salt in a baking bowl and make a hole in the middle. In another bowl, combine warm water, oil, and the egg. Stir, then pour in the hole. With your hands, work the dough until it’s smooth and elastic. Now follows the weirdest part: fill a small bowl with oil. Work the dough into a ball and place it in the oil. Yes, you read right! Let the dough rest in the oil bath for about 30 minutes and you’ll get the most elastic dough ever!



In the meantime, prepare the filling. Melt 50g butter in a pan. Stir in the breadcrumbs and continue stirring for about 2 minutes, or until the crumbs start gaining some colour. Remove from heat.

Place the apple slices in a bowl. Add the sugar, raisins, cinnamon, grated lemon zest, and the breadcrumb-butter-mixture. Stir until everything is well combined.

Now, take the dough from the oil bath. Remove excess oil and divide the dough into two equal-sized parts. Pat each in a bit of flour. Now follows the second weirdest part: roll the dough out on a kitchen towel into a square, as thin as you can, about 35cm*25cm. Oddly enough, the dough doesn’t stick to the fabric – especially if you sprinkle it with a bit of flour.

Melt the rest of the butter. Brush the rolled dough with about 2/3 of the melted butter. Place the filling on the dough, leaving about 3cm on the sides uncovered and about 5cm at the bottom side. Fold the sides (see the picture). Gently roll your strudel like a Swiss roll – it goes surprisingly easy with the towel!



Transfer your strudel carefully onto a baking tray so that the seam-side faces down (and proceed to make the second strudel). Bake your strudel(s) in a preheated oven (190C) for about 30 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Be careful not to let them burn, though; burned raisins taste horribly bitter ;)

Brush the strudel(s) with melted butter once they’re out of the oven. Let cool a bit and sprinkle with (vanilla-flavoured) confectioner’s sugar.

To me, strudel tastes the best when cooled down to room temperature, but I totally understand if you can’t wait that long! Vanilla sauce or ice-cream is a must with Apfelstrudel, of course.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

I’ve been a fan and a regular baker of muffins ever since a cousin of mine served Bright Day Banana Muffins for breakfast once I was visiting her back in the 90’s. I’ve tried many, many different kinds of muffins after that, but nothing seemed to be of any serious challenge to these legendary Bright Day Banana Muffins, until... Recently, I discovered this recipe for Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins in a cookbook called “New York - les recettes culte” (yes, do buy the book, it's worth every cent! and no, I don't get paid to say so!). There’s something almost otherworldly in the ingenious combination of tastes and structures here.

For 12 muffins you’ll need (and don’t even consider making just half of the dough to make 6 muffins, you sooooo will regret it!):

Dry ingredients:

• 320g wheat flour


• 3 Tbsp poppy seeds


• ½ tsp salt (if you use salted butter, a bit less is needed)


• 3 tsp baking powder

Liquid ingredients:

• zest of 1 lemon


• 150g sugar


• 125g melted butter (or margarine for dairy-free)


• 2 eggs


• 3 Tbsp lemon juice


• 20cl natural yoghurt (or soy yoghurt for dairy-free)

Fruit:

• 100g peeled and grated apple


• 100g peeled pear, cut into small cubes

Icing:

• 125g confectioners’ sugar


• 2 Tbsp lemon juice

Oh, how I love to bake muffins! The procedure is always the same: combine dry ingredients in a baking bowl. In another one, mix together the liquid ones. Then pour the liquid ones onto the dry ones, and stir until well combined. Then add fruit and stir again. Pour the batter into a muffin pan and bake in a preheated (190 Celsius) oven for some 25 minutes. Take the muffins out of the pan, let them cool a little bit and then brush with the icing (another technique is to dip them upside down in the icing - for me it didn’t work, it was just a mess..). Oh, and for the icing you just need to combine sugar & juice - if it’s too stiff, and a bit more juice, and if it’s too liquid, add a bit more sugar! Decorate with poppy seeds and serve with your favourite coffee or tea!

PS. I've started to replace the apple by pear, so I use 200g pear instead. And when buying poppy seeds, do make sure that the expiry date is a long time ahead; otherwise the seeds might have an unpleasant rancid taste!