Brownies & berries

My last Classic to Modern Cake! This Brownie Berry Tower layered in chocolate cream {cream, cocoa, sugar, gelatin, water}, Grand Marnier cream {cream, Grand Marnier, sugar, gelatin} & berries between brownie layers. The brownies are amazing; we swapped in corn syrup in place of some the sugar, which made them really moist. We even made our own chocolate chards by piping and spreading white & dark chocolate onto parchment paper, letting it set and then breaking it into pieces. Definitely the prettiest one so far.

Mango mousse & fun with chocolate

The steps involved in the making of this Mango Mousse Cake are easy, but the decorating technique is the interesting part. First, the recipe: Sponge sheet {eggs, sugar, flour & vanilla} is baked and cut into circles. The mousse {cream, egg yolks, sugar, gelatin & mango puree} is whipped. The glaze {mango puree, gelatin, sugar & water} is cooked over heat.

To assemble, the sponge cake circles are layered in with the mousse in a springform pan and the resulting cake is refridgerated until set. Once set, the glaze is poured over the surface and garnished with fruit. For the chocolate design {the really fun part!}, melted chocolate is piped in a lattice pattern over a piece of acetate which has been cut the length of the cake's circumference. Before the chocolate hardens, the acetate is wrapped around the cake and left on until set. Once removed, the lattice should stay in place {it almost did}. Voila!

The perfect summer dessert {in the fall}

Tangy Berry Torte Day was a busy one. I like the sound of Buttermilk White Layer Cake, which was your typical batter. Shortening, sugar, lemon zest & salt are creamed and then: eggs, egg whites & buttermilk are blended and flour, baking powder & soda are sifted. The wet and dry mixtures are added into the shortening mixture alternately. Baking time is about 30 minutes.

The Tangy Whipped Frosting included sour cream, which I don't think I've tried before. The technique was a bit different: cream, icing sugar and vanilla are whipped, then the heated gelatine with the sour cream added in to temper it are added in and the mixture is whipped to firm peaks.

The layer cake and whipped frosting are layered with a berry mixture and then masked. I tried a "rustic" technique, which really means I could not get the sides of my cake smooth, plus I saw it in Martha Stewart Living once. There should actually be four layers in this cake, which would result in a TALL slice of cake, so I kept it to three.

Gateau gone wrong

It was an off-day in the kitchen. My pastry cream burned, I overwhipped my topping and I piped my puff pastry layers too thin! But somehow, this ended up looking and tasting good. Go figure. I had never heard of a Gateau St. Honore before, but it is very similar to a Napolean, except for the profiteroles {cream puffs}. Puff pastry is rolled out very thin, cut into circles and baked. For this recipe, it's meant to baked very thin and not puff up, so we weighed our circles down with mini cooling racks before going into the oven. Then, choux paste {water, butter, salt, eggs and flour stirred quickly on high heat} is piped into little balls and baked. Then {yes, there's more}, pastry cream {milk, cream, vanilla, sugar, cornstarch, eggs} is made and set aside to cool. Where I went wrong with that is that the mixture needs to be stirred very quickly, right down to the bottom of the pot, otherwise it sits there and burns.

Once everything is baked/cooled/set, the puff circles, pastry cream and fresh strawberries are layered and masked with whipped topping. To garnish, strawberries are arranged on the top and the choux paste puffs are filled with pastry cream and placed around the top of the cake and around the sides. Voila!

Better luck next week

Another dense European cake. Similar to the Austrian Linzer Torte, the Sacher Torte was created at the Viennese Sacher Hotel and you can even have it shipped to you if you want to try the original. It's a multi-step process that results in a really dry cake! Dark chocolate, butter and hazelnut paste are melted/egg yolks and sugar are whipped/flour, cocoa powder and ground hazelnuts are combined/egg whites and sugar are whipped...then all this is mixed and baked. Once cooled, it's sliced in half and filled with apricot jam, then ganache is poured over it. The word "sacher" should be piped on every slice to make it authentic, but I like my hearts better. All that work for something that didn't even taste that great!

Crunchy caramel

Now we're getting somewhere! My Cakes: Classic to Modern class started this past Saturday and everything on the menu sounds really good and involves a few recipes so will be more challenging. For week 1, we made a Crunchy Caramel Cake which included three recipes: Meringue noisette layers, butterscotch caramel and Chantilly cream. The meringues {ground hazelnuts, cornstarch, egg whites, sugar and vanilla} were baked at 250 degrees for an hour and a half {but could be baked for up to 2-3 hours} to dry them out.

Making caramel is scary. Sugar has to be cooked on high heat, along with water and glucose. While the mixture is caramelizing, the sides of the pot need to be brushed down with water to avoid crystallization and if a drop of the boiling mixture touches you, you will be scarred FOR LIFE with a sugar burn.

Then we made Chantilly cream. Whipped cream, gelatin and sugar made fluffy. Everything layered together and SO sweet.