Monday 1 October 2012

A week full of events!

Since the national cupcake week I have been so busy that I had no time to update my blog:0(
I managed to make a second batch of cupcakes, they were yummy Hummingbird Bakery red velvet cupcakes;

















They were pretty delicious but I didn't manage to get the colour just right this time. I'm not sure if liquid colour suit red velvet recipes better than gel. I'm going to try it with the liquid colouring next time.

The best part of that week was that I made a celebration cake called Prinsess Tårta/ Princess Cake, this is a cake first made by Jenny Åkerström back in the early 1930s. The cake was called "Grön tårta"/ Green cake (due to the green marzipan "lid" on the cake), but since the Swedish princesses liked it so much they changed its name to Princess Cake. Now there are a lot of disputes regarding what was originally in the cake and whether the additional ingredients jam and cream have turned this cake into something called "Opera Cake". I personally will always call it Princess Cake and will forever associate it with any celebration occasion we had back home in Sweden as there was rarely a birthday, anniversary or graduation without a Princess Cake on the table. I guess this is were my love for cakes come from.

The recipe is quite straight forward (the source is Sju Sorters Kakor);
4 eggs
170g sugar
60g plain flour, sifted
60g potato four (not starch, I found this at a health food store), sifted
2 tsp baking powder

I made twice the amounts because I wanted decent sized layers.

Preheat the oven to 150c fan

This recipe requires a 26cm diametre cake tin, start by preparing the tin with butter and grease proof paper.

Mix the eggs and sugars until light and fluffy.
Add the flours and the baking powder.
Mix gently until incorporated and pour into the tin (the mixture is very liquidy unlike normal sponge cakes), put it into the oven for circa 40 minutes but do check after 30 minutes.


The filling is straight forward if the custard is shop bought but can also be made if you have time. Just make 200ml of your favourite custard recipe and add 4 gelatin leaves for it set. I skipped the gelatin part as I rather not have it if I can avoid it.

I used reduced raspberry sugar, 2/3s of Waitrose's Madagascan's Vanilla bean custard and a large tub of double cream+ 100ml extra in case.

Be GENEROUS with the jam!
First layer is simply raspberry jam. For the second layer, I whipped 100ml of the double cream to the point it was pretty thick and mix it with the 2/3s of the custard. You can do more but I was scared it wouldn't set! Once done, whip up about another 150ml and ice the cake.

Put the third layer on the iced cake and fridge it fully covered!
It's important to do the top layer on the same day as you are going to eat it, otherwise the marzipan goes too soft from the cream underneath. You can prevent this with a tiny bit of buttercream spread on the marzipan lid before putting it on the cake but that's faffing around a bit too much in my opinion. Plus, this cake should be consumed, fully, on the day it's made :0)


 The last part is to smother the cake with whipped cream and ensure that you create a dome-esque form on the top.


I made some tiny flowers to cover up a fold I could not get rid of!

I had some marzipan already in yellow and decided to use that, I wouldn't recommend rolling marzipan out like I did. It's hard work if you are pressed for time and I rolled it out 24 hours before hand to let it "sweat", although it was wrapped up properly. Use the rolled out ones and save yourself some time.


Dust the cake with icing sugar and add your decoration. This cake is just amazingly tasty and light. We had it for breakfast with a rather large Magnum of champagne which made it a great start for our 30th birthdays! Puss och kram to my family who unfortunately weren't there.

That weekend we also visited Denbies Vineyard for a train tour around the vineyard with an English sparkling wine tasting with canapes at the top of a hill. Excuse the poor quality photos.

This was on the way up, it felt like we were in France or Italy, minus the sun!

On the way down, it was beautiful and very romantic. I manage to have three glasses of Denbies' finest!
It was very chilly.... but our three course meal warmed us right up!
The weekend also included a trip to Tower of London which was great. I didn't manage to take a lot of pictures but I liked this view because it showed how diverse London's skyline is, mixing old with new. Awesome!
 
 Hope you have enjoyed this post which is somewhat a short novel:0)

Ciao! x
 
 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment