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 ;)

 

Day 17: Chocolate Yule Log

Today, I didn't bake anything for my reverse Advent's calendar.

Instead, I finally made one of my dreams come true: I baked a real bûche de Noël, or a Yule log! (How cool that the word yule exist, by the way - just like jul in Swedish!) Theoretically, I could have kept it for our Christmas dinner - according to some recipes I read, a Yule log can be frozen up to three months.

But this one is going to a very special purpose: a class I'm teaching is going to eat it tomorrow - it's their last French class before their Christmas holidays... Hope they'll be as thrilled as my kids who got to eat the test version today - and made me promise we'll have one for the Christmas dinner as well ;)

At the same time, I got the chance two other things I had never done before: making a real ganache and butter icing - how can I have missed these two this long?! Well, now I know how to make them!

The following recipe is for one log. It's adapted from this recipe - I browsed a lot of different ones, and somehow this seemed perfect. And it was...

I made double this portion, and used about 1/4 to make a small test version, and the rest to build a very big log! I'd say one portion is big enough for 10 people.

I had some serious problems in getting the Swiss roll done properly: it broke in several places when I tried to roll it in. Luckily, everything is covered with that butter icing, so no-one will see that. Anyway, I'd be thankful for some tips about how to make a perfect Swiss roll!

This is what you need for the Swiss roll:

• 4 eggs


• 3/4 cup sugar


• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour


• 1/4 cup cocoa powder


• 1 tsp baking powder


• 3 Tbsp melted butter

For the ganache:

• 180ml heavy cream


• 180g dark chocolate (about 60% or so)

For the butter icing:

• 1 cup butter, softened


• 1,5 cups confectioner's sugar


• 3 Tbsp cocoa powder


• + a bit of heavy cream, if needed

For the decoration:

• marzipan figures


• confectioner's sugar

First, prepare the ganache. Bring the cream to the boil in a saucepan, remove from heat, and add the chopped chocolate. Stir until the chocolate melts. Place in a cool place - this time of the year, even my room temperature was cool enough! Fridge is not a good option, though; try a cold-water bath instead if your house is warmer than mine. Let the ganache-to-be stand about one hour. Then beat the mixture until it gets fluffy and somewhat less dark. This took about 7 minutes with my spiral whisk!

Then it's time to prepare the Swiss roll. Combine flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder in a bowl. Set aside. Beat the eggs and the sugar in another bowl until the mixture is pale and thick. Add sifted flour mixture and the butter and stir until well combined. Pour the batter on an oven tray covered with a parchment paper. Leave a margin on all sides. My cake was about 35cm times 25cm.

Bake in a preheated oven (200C) about 10 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. In the meantime, place another parchment paper on a baking tray. Sprinkle some sugar on it. Once you take the cake out, reverse it immediately on the sugar-covered parchment paper. Remove the original paper and roll the cake in, starting from the side closer to you. (Like I told you, mine broke in several places. I have no idea what went wrong!) Let the cake cool while you prepare the butter icing.

Soften the butter and beat it until it gets creamy and fluffy. Then add sifted confectioner's sugar and cocoa powder, and rub them in the butter. Add some cream if needed (I didn't need any, but then again, I just couldn't use all of the sugar amount either! It felt horribly over-sweet as it was - with maybe 3/4 of the sugar amount of the original recipe!).

When the ganache and the butter icing are ready and the cake has cooled to room temperature, it's time to build the log. Roll the cake out again, spread the ganache evenly on top of it, and roll in again. Spread the butter icing on your log and, using a small spatula, create a wood-a-like surface (this was really easy with the butter icing! I just love it!). Decorate with any marzipan figures you like, and sprinkle with some confectioner's sugar. We want some snow for Christmas, don't we?!

I made my marzipan leaves and mushrooms myself. I had planned to buy them, but, well, maybe I just don't know the right places to go in Helsinki - or there aren't any available. At least I couldn't find any. So equipped with some natural-coloured marzipan and a bottle of green and red colour I managed some mushrooms, green leaves, and red berries.

The log can be kept 2-3 days in the fridge (if it fits ;) ), or frozen.

P.S. You can flavour the ganache and the butter icing - next time, I'll use some coffee in both! Or how about orange? Or - well, just consult your Flavour Thesaurus for further ideas!



 

Day 8: Little Josephines

Last weekend I baked two Chocolate Mousse Cakes, so I had a lot of egg yolks that I had to use as soon as possible. Luckily I didn't have to wait long to get an inspiration.

In the morning I was reading one of my favourite baking books Underbart är gott, and happened to see an interesting recipe that only required four ingredients: egg yolks, butter, marzipan, and almond flakes. That sounded so crazy I just had to try these little cakes called Josephines. I was almost sure this could only result in a disaster - I mean, what kind of a batter would you get using only those ingredients?!

But weirdly enough, the batter was smooth and the Josephines themselves.. well.. I feel like repeating myself, but they are like almonds gone to heaven!

I don't think they will keep well, though; they are very moist - maybe in the fridge they'd keep up to a week or so, but I think I'll make a second batch just before Christmas and serve these first ones asap ;)

For 10 small-cupcake-sized Josephines you need:

• 300g marzipan


• 170g butter


• 90g egg yolks


• about 10g almond flakes


• plus some extra butter for the forms

This is how you make them:

Grate the marzipan into a baking bowl. Add softened butter and stir until well combined. Then add egg yolks and stir again until smooth. Prepare the cupcake forms: I suggest you use silicon ones - I tried in both silicon and aluminum ones, but although I had buttered the aluminum forms really well, the Josephines wouldn't come out of them well. Place some almond flakes into each form, then fill with batter and bake in a preheated oven (150-170C) about 15 minutes or until well set.

Let the Josephines cool before taking them out of the forms.

Serve immediately!

P.S. I have no idea where the Swedish name Josefiner comes from: a quick Google search in English and French didn't result in any similar recipes... so I'll call them Josephines until I find out what they really are called in English :)