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.

Not chocolate

Today's creation was banana layer cake with German icing - which I assumed was German CHOCOLATE icing, but wasn't. There is walnuts and coconut and a bunch of other stuff in there. The cake batter called for sliced bananas but we substituted those with banana puree (?) which explains the bright yellow colour that is not of nature. I love anything banana-flavoured, but would definitely make this with real bananas and - you guessed it - chocolate icing next time.

Carrots & cream cheese

Baking school is back! I forgot to photograph last week's pound cake, but it was pretty simple-looking anyway. In other news, I made marzipan carrots today:


This week: Carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Vegetables and desserts are not two things that go hand-in-hand, if you ask me, but the method used to make this was different from a typical batter-type cake. Eggs and sugar were heated over a double boiler and then whipped. Vanilla, lemon juice and rum was added and then shredded carrots and a mixture of graham crumbs, flour, ground almonds, cinnamon and baking powder were mixed in by hand (meaning I was elbow-deep in goo). I'll probably try a slice tomorrow - it actually smelled amazing coming out of the oven, so maybe I'll be sold on the idea then.