Easy Cake Decorating Ideas: Princess Cake with a Heart

Today, for once, we had a very late breakfast and a late lunch, so I'd thought we'd survive until dinner without having to eat any snack in between. How wrong I was! Around 4PM I started to crave something sweet, and inspired by our ladybird cake experience yesterday, I decided to bake a quick princess cake. Less than one hour later, we were devouring this raspberry-flavoured treat!

I'm not a big talent in cake decorating, but this one is really easy to make. And, as far as I'm concerned, it's more important how a cake tastes than what it looks like :)

This time, I wanted to try baking the cake with whole-grain flour, and it worked very well indeed. A small step towards a healthier treat...

For one cake you need:

• 4 eggs


• 100ml sugar


• 200ml whole-grain wheat flour


• 1tsp baking powder


• 75ml milk


• 75ml raspberry juice


• 100ml raspberry jam


• 200ml heavy cream


• 200g marzipan


• a few drops red food colouring


• 1 tsp powder sugar

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. Take about half of the cream and mix it with the raspberry jam.

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 half of the milk and half of the raspberry juice. Spread the cream-raspberry-filling on the bottom half, then place the upper half on top and moisten with the rest of the milk and raspberry juice. Spread the remaining cream evenly on top of the cake.

Roll the  marzipan between two layers of cling film into a disc just a bit bigger than the cake’s diameter. From one corner, take out a heart with a cookie cutter. Trim the rest of the marzipan if needed. Place the disc carefully on top of the cake and fold to cover the sides as well (I wasn't very careful enough today, and the marzipan broke in two places...). Sprinkle with powder sugar. Colour the heart with few drops of red colouring. Place the heart in the middle of the cake and enjoy!

 

 

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 ;)

 

Pastéis de 4114 km de Belém

All my friends know how good I am at keeping secrets. Not very good, I’m afraid. In fact, I suck at it! So no way I’d be able to keep the recipe of almost perfect pastéis as a secret for two centuries… even two days would have been tough!

So here you have it, the not-so-secret recipe of mine. It's quite complex, though, so please ask if you've got any problems at any point!

It is mandatory that the puff pastry be homemade. But don’t worry, I suck at making puff pastry almost as badly as at keeping secrets. And yet I managed to do it – for this purpose, the dough just doesn’t have to be perfect (like, say, for croissants, which I’ve failed miserably every time I’ve tried to make them so far). Any attempt you make will be good enough for pastéis!

I used 1/3 whole-grain wheat and 2/3 all-purpose flour, but for a more traditional result, use only all-purpose. Not everyone is a fan of whole-grain like myself! And not everyone has as good flour as I have, and even I am tragically running out of it. (Time to visit Germany to get some more?!)

For about 30 pastéis you need:

For the dough:

• 400g flour


• 225ml warm water


• 200g butter


• (1/4 tsp salt but only if using unsalted butter)

For the filling:

• 12-14 egg yolks (reserve the whites to use for some other purpose)


• 200g sugar


• 4 Tbps cornstarch


• 1,2 liters heavy cream


• zest of one organic lemon, cut in long stripes


• one vanilla pod

First, make the filling. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan. Bring slowly to the boil, stirring constantly. This tends to burn really easily, so don’t even think of leaving the custard, even for two seconds! Let cool completely and make the dough in the meantime.

To make the dough, place the flour in a baking bowl. Make a hole in the middle, pour in the warm water, and work the dough with your hands until it’s smooth. Always start with a bit less water and add more if needed. It should be firm and smooth at the same time.

Now roll the dough out to a rectangle a bit smaller than an A4 paper. Smear half of the dough with softened butter. Fold the unbuttered half over the buttered one. Now, turn the dough 90 degrees and roll it into a long rectangle. Fold in three parts and let rest in the fridge for about 10 minutes. Repeat this rolling-out-and-folding-in-three still twice. Don’t worry if some butter comes out – just make sure to use enough flour so that the dough doesn’t glue to the baking surface!

After the last fold, let the dough rest in the fridge some 10 minutes and roll it out into a rectangle as thin as you can. Then, roll the dough in just as when you’re making cinnamon rolls.

Now comes the hard part: cut the rolled-in dough into pieces of about 1,5cm thick and place each in a buttered pastéis form or a muffin form. Take the form into your hands and with your thumbs, work the dough gently so that it in the end covers the sides of the form as well. (This might sound complicated, still hanging there?) It’s important to find the right amount of dough: it should be very thin but not break. Once you’ve done a couple of them, you’ll find the ideal amount of dough!

Then return to your filling. Remove lemon zests and vanilla pod (which you can use 2-3 times) from the custard. Fill the dough-covered forms with the custard. Bake in a pre-heated oven (250C) for about 10 minutes or until your pastéis get brown spots but don’t burn (which happens very easily, so don’t leave them unattended in the oven!). I’ve been told that the real pastéis get baked in 400C, but even 300C was way too much for my oven and my pastéis. Remember to place an extra tray on the bottom of your oven to catch any extra butter that might drip during the baking.

Serve your pastéis warm or cold, with or without some cinnamon on top!

P.S. Of course,  you can use ready-made puff pastry – but it just won’t be the same…

P.P.S. Needless to say, the distance between my new home and  Rua de Belém, 84-92 is 4114 km!

 

Sticky Toffee Sauce

Sticky toffee sauce is one of my favourite accompaniments for ice cream and/or strawberries. I used to make it myself quite often a long, long time ago, but not being a fan of cooking that hot syrup (sooo afraid of burning it, me, or the kids :) ), I haven’t made it in many years now.

But going through my old magazines I came across one toffee sauce recipe where you don’t actually need to melt any sugar – you can use molasses instead. So I’m back to my sticky toffee sauce routine!

This is a dessert you can make while preparing the main course - all you really need to do is to stir the sauce once a while during the ten minutes it needs to cook.

For 6 people you need:

• 100ml dark molasses (or dark treacle; Zuckerrübensirup here in Germany)


• 200ml heavy cream (non-dairy for a vegan version)


• 30g butter (or vegan margarine)

Combine molasses and cream in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat, and let boil over a low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring once in a while. The sauce is ready when it starts to thicken. Now, add the butter, let it melt, and stir until the butter is well combined with the rest. Remove from the heat.

Serve hot, warm, or cold with ice cream and/or berries or fruit – if you resist the temptation to spoon it all up just like that…!

P.S. Nothing compares with the taste of a homemade sticky toffee sauce - with three ingredients. And I find the colour perfect as well. Makes me wonder how come the ones available at the supermarket have so many ingredients: one that I saw had 15 altogether – among them two different artificial flavours, colouring agents, and so on. Totally unnecessary, if you ask me ;)

Chocolate Fondue, the No Effort Way

I’m going to make a confession: Before coming up with this idea I had never eaten chocolate fondue. It’s always been a tempting idea, yet I wasn’t ready to invest money and especially cupboard space in those cute little chocolate fondue pots.

But then I realised you don’t need any fondue pots! You can use espresso cups, and make a hot water bath do the job for you – while you’re eating your main dish, of course!

Use any fresh seasonal fruit or berries to dip in the fondue. I bet at least mango, pineapple, peaches, cherries, and bananas would taste awesome! But now it’s the second last week of (at least organic) strawberry season here in southern Germany, so I didn't have a choice, did I?

For one portion you need:

• 2 Tbsp (non-dairy) heavy cream


• 20g dark (vegan) chocolate


• about 15 fruit pieces or berries to dip in the fondue

First, combine cream and chocolate in espresso cups. Then place the cups in an earthenware oven dish. Fill the dish with boiling water just enough for the cups to be covered until the cream-chocolate-level. (If you happen to have pasta for the main dish, think of using the cooking water to do this! Hugely ecological :) )

Once you’re ready to have your dessert, just stir the chocolate-cream-mixture gently with a spoon and remove from the water bath. Serve with fruit – dip them in the “fondue” with a small dessert fork! And don’t forget a spoon – you’ll need it to scrape the rest of that yummy chocolate…!

Oven Pancake with Strawberries and Crème Chantilly

Pancakes are a great dessert after a light meal - like pea soup! But who has the time to make them? No problem, pancake batter can also be baked in the oven. Once again, you can enjoy your main course while your oven is taking care of the dessert.

This time of the year I normally serve oven pancake with fresh berries and whipped cream - when no fresh berries are available, use raspberry or strawberry jam instead!

This is what you need for 6 portions:

• 150g flour (I use whole-grain, but you can use all-purpose as well)


• 400ml milk


• 3 eggs


• a pinch of salt


• 8g vanilla sugar


• 30g butter

This is how you proceed:

1. Set your oven to 225 C when you start cooking the main dish.

2. Make the batter: in a bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, and milk, and beat gently. Then add the eggs and beat until well combined.

3. Take a round cake form (mine has a diameter of 26cm). Slice the butter and place the slices in the form. Put the form in the oven for just the time it takes for the butter to melt. Then take the form out again, pour the batter in, and put it back in the oven.

4. Go and enjoy your main dish! Set the alarm for 15 minutes - it takes around 15-20 minutes for the pancake to be ready.

5. Serve warm with berries and crème Chantilly!

Orange and White Chocolate Ice Cream

Here's the ice cream recipe I promised yesterday! I love the combination of white chocolate and orange, there's something royal in it. (Not everyone shared my opinion, though, but most did!)

I've been making ice cream for some time now, but so far I've never tried recipes involving egg yolks. I've thought they're not necessary - if you buy ice cream at the supermarket, there's no egg in them either! (But some artificial thickening agents to compensate, I guess...). But now that I gave it a try, I do understand there is a clear advantage when using eggs in ice cream: the texture is much creamier, even after two days of freezing.

For about 5 smallish servings you need:

• 3 egg yolks


• 100g sugar


• 50g white chocolate


• 300ml milk


• 200ml heavy cream


• 1 Tbsp dried orange peel powder (if you don't have any, try grated orange zest instead!)

First, choose a baking bowl that you can use for a hot-water bath. Then, place yolks and sugar in the bowl and mix until pale yellow. Scald 150ml milk and beat it to the yolk-sugar-mixture. Now heat the custard in hot-water bath, constantly stirring, until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Be careful, it overcooks easily! Remove from the heat and add the rest of the milk, cream, melted white chocolate, and the orange peel powder and stir until well combined. Chill for a couple of hours.

Prepare the ice-cream according to the instructions of your ice-cream maker. Serve with rhubarb tarte Tatin, for example!

P.S. To make orange peel powder, I dried peels of organic oranges in the oven, at 50 C. It took about 24 hours for them to be totally dry - and during that time, there was a heavenly smell at hour house! Then I asked a friend to grind the dried peels into powder (I don't have any machines at my kitchen, besides ice cream maker, coffee grinder, espresso machine, water boiler, and an old hand mixer...). I warmly recommend!

Chocolate Ice Cream

As most Finns, I eat a lot of ice cream. Or I used to, until I was diagnosed with lactose intolerance. That meant no milk, yoghurt, cream - or ice cream for a long, long time. Then some eight years ago I got an ice cream machine as birthday present! Cool! I could do all kinds of sorbets and soy-based ice creams myself. But when the first lactose free ice creams appeared on the supermarket shelves, I didn’t feel motivated to continue my own production - until I moved to Germany where even most of the sorbets have added lactose in them! Good news for my abandoned Krups Sorbetière - now she’s got something to do again.

I’ve tried a lot of different recipes so far, and this very creamy, very chocolatey one here is among my absolute favourites.

For a portion that fits into my sorbetière, I need:

• 200g dark chocolate


• 500ml double cream, divided


• 200ml milk (I use 3,8% fat)


• some sugar, depending on how bitter your chocolate is and how sweet you like your ice-cream


• optional: 2 Tbsp of any liquor of your liking (Amaretto, Cointreau..)

Bring 300ml cream to a boil in a pan. Set aside and put in the chocolate and sugar. Let melt, then add the milk. Pour into a recipient with a lid, then set in your fridge for a couple of hours. About 30 minutes before serving, whip the rest of the cream into chantilly, add liquor (if using), mix with the chocolate-cream mixture, and prepare the ice-cream according to the instructions of your ice-cream maker. Serve as a dessert - or as part of your Sunday brunch!