Cake #187 - Meringue Overload

Wednesday Experiment - Meringue "Overload", spring and St Patrick's Day in my mind.

Meringue baked on thin sponges, filled and decorated with whipped cream, fruit and milk chocolate.

Meringue Overload

Base

250 g butter

200 ml caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla sugar

4 egg yolks

200 ml milk

300 ml plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

Meringue

6 egg whites

400 ml caster sugar

Food colouring(s) of your choice

Filling

300 ml double cream, whipped

2 bananas

Physalis

A can of mixed fruit

Milk chocolate, melted

1. Preheat oven to 175C/350F and line 3 oven trays with baking parchment. 

2. Cream together butter and sugars.

3. Add egg yolks and mix well.

4. Add dry ingredients and milk.

5. Spread dough into three circles about 20cm in diameter on baking parchments.

6. Whip egg whites together with sugar until stiff. Divide meringue mixture into three bowls and add food colouring if you want a multi-coloured cake.

7. Spread egg white mix evenly on top of each base. 

8. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes. 

9. Remove from baking trays and let cool before filling.

10. Fill with whipped cream and fruit and decorate with more fruit and piped milk chocolate. 

Cinnamon Buns

Cinnamon Bun baking mood!

Every now and then I bake them 'fool proof' - in cupcake cases, that is, so they don't expand too much, collapse or explode.

Best when still warm, fresh from the oven!

Cinnamon buns (makes 12-14)

Dough
300 ml / 1 1/4 cup lukewarm milk
25 g fresh yeast (or 1 bag / 7 g fast action dried yeast)
100 ml / 1/2 cup sugar
½ tsp ground cardamom
1 egg
100 g melted butter
about 1 litre / 4 cups plain flour

Filling 
100 g butter
2 tbsp cinnamon
1 dl / 1/3 cup sugar

Glazing
1 egg

1. Dissolve yeast in warm milk.
2. Add sugar, cardamom and egg and mix well.
3. Start adding flour gradually.
4. After you have kneaded in about half of the flour, add melted butter.
5. Knead in more flour until your dough is not sticky any more but still soft. It is better to leave the dough a little too soft than make it too dense as the buns will be too dry and hard after baking.
6. Leave the dough to rise in a warm place until double in size, for about half an hour.
7. Roll your dough into a rectangle, about 0,5 cm thick.
8. Spread the butter on top and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.
9. Roll the dough into a cylinder and then cut it into 12 pieces. Place the buns in (large) cupcake cases.
10. Let the buns rise for about half an hour, then glaze with egg and sprinkle with pearl sugar.
11. Bake in the oven at 220C for 10-12 minutes.

Cake #186 - Pacman

Tuesday Humour Cake - Pacman.

I had been planning to bake this cake a while. The plan was to have The Husband's Pacman coffee mug in the picture, too, but he always forgot to bring it home from the office where he uses it, when I asked for it. And the times he did bring it home, I had already baked something else. The Husband finally suggested I could photograph his Pacman socks, instead, but... Oh, well.

The cake itself is a basic sponge, filled with whipped cream and raspberry jam and the icing is made of white chocolate and butter, with a few drops of yellow food colouring.

Cake #185 - Käsekuchen

Monday Mood Cake - Käsekuchen, German style cheesecake made of quark.

Quark is one of my favourite dairy products. In Ireland you can find it at least in Tesco and Dunnes Stores. It can be used the way you would use cream cheese or you can use it in batters or you can make delicious desserts of eat. Or it it plain with fruit and berries. It is nearly fat free if you are careful with your calories intake...

There are various recipes for this German style cheesecake, Käsekuchen. For this cake I used this recipe except I did not separate the eggs, nor did I put any berries into the filling.

I decorated the cake with fresh raspberries and piped milk chocolate. More raspberries to be served with and oh so good it was! 

Cake #183 - French Chocolate Cake

Saturday Surprise - French Chocolate Cake.

Continuing with my (not deliberate) French theme, after Tarte Tatin and Petites Madeleines, I made a French Chocolate Cake. French Mud Cake, I would say.

You can find the delicious recipe here.

Cake #182 - Petites Madeleines

Thursday Experiment - Madeleine Cakes, aka Petites Madeleines.

À la recherche du temps perdu. - In Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time book series they often enjoy Petites Madeleines. I saw Madeleine pans at TK Maxx and could not resist. Based on the delicacy of my first cakes, the pans will definitely be used every now and then!

There are various recipes for Madeleines - I wanted to start with lemony ones, and oh so good they were indeed!

This recipe I used is on BBC Good Food and it is by Michel Roux.

Cake #181 - Tarte Tatin

Wednesday Experiment - Tarte Tatin.

I bought a proper cast iron frying pan today and wanted to test it. Worked out nicely!

Tarte Tatin

Pastry

400 ml plain flour

200 g butter

200 ml icing sugar

3 egg yolks

Filling

5 big apples, I used Bramley cooking apples

50 ml lemon juice

150 ml sugar

100 g butter

1. Preheat the oven to 250 C/ 500 F.

2. Mix flour, cold butter and icing sugar until crumbs. 

3. Add egg yolks and mix well.

4. Form a ball of the dough, wrap it in clingfilm and put in the fridge for at least an hour.

5. Peel and cut the apples into slices and squeeze the lemon juice over.

6. Caramelise 100 ml of the sugar on a hot pan.

7. Place the apple slices on top of the caramelised sugar, sprinkle the rest of the sugar and the butter on top. 

8. Bake in the oven until the apples have softened a bit, about 10 minutes.

9. Take the pastry out of the fridge and roll into a circle of the size of your pan. 

10. Place the pastry on top of the apples and put back into the oven.

11. Turn the heat down to 220 C /425 F and bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes.

12. Let cool a few minutes.

13. Take a serving plate and carefully flip the cake pan and the plate so that the pan is on top, then lift off the pan. 

14. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.