Peaches & cream

We made the hot milk sponge for this Peach Yogurt Mousse Cake in our last class - it's baked in large sheets similar to how Raspberry Swiss Rolls are. So this week all we had to do was make simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, with a bit of the syrup from the peach slices) and the yogurt mousse. Hand-whipped cream (tiring!) is blended with yogurt, sugar and gelatin. Alternating layers of sponge, peaches and mousse are layered into a springform pan and refrigerated (preferably overnight) to set.


My peach slices are supposed to look like a peony but the apricot glaze kind of takes away from the look I was going for. This was a quick recipe - our class typically runs about 3 hours and this took half that.

Austrian treat

I had never heard of Linzer Torte before, but apparently it's very popular in eastern Europe as it originated in Austria. It's a dense cake that includes lemon zest, ground nuts and jam and we were told that it should be enjoyed in small pieces with coffee. I do like my coffee so sampled this almost as soon as I got home today.

It was quite rich, but flaky...a perfect after-dinner treat. We piped a lattice-pattern on the top of it, which ended up flattening out in the oven so that you could barely tell we had gone to the effort. I'll be using a much smaller piping tip next time.

I love the word 'chiffon'

So there were actual oranges in this week's cake, which was a nice change from last week's puree. Orange Chiffon Cake is a variation of Angel Food Cake, the difference being that Angel Food is lighter and has no levening agents (baking powder) - it's simply whipped egg whites and sugar mixed with vanilla and a mixture of cake flour and icing sugar. Orange Chiffon incorporates all this plus baking powder, orange zest, the egg yolks, water and vegetable oil.


I want to pretend that my whole week wouldn't have been ruined if my cake fell, but I would be lying. Apparently, if your bowl and whip aren't completely clean and without a speck of oil, whipping the egg whites (mixed with a bit of cream of tarter) could result in a total catastrophe! But all went well. The sugar content in these is high enough that there's no need to refrigerate them - they should last a week on your kitchen counter, which is a little alarming.