a Piece of Cake...: sponge

Showing posts with label sponge. Show all posts

Friday, 11 July 2008

Very berry cake

I made this cake a few weeks ago, but never got around to posting about it. I used a victoria sponge recipe and topped it with a little leftover white chocolate ganache and lots and lots of raspberries and blackberries, to cut the cloying sweetness of the white chocolate. I always get excited when I see blackberries -- partly because the sightings are so rare and I love the fruit. But also it brings back childhood memories of a hardy little blackberry bush we had in a house we stayed in for a few years. I loved eating them half-ripe -- so tart and sweet at the same time. hmm.

My mother used to make victoria sponges every now and then, along with her staple madeiras, when we lived in England. But I hadn't made or had one in years.
Looking around for recipes, I learned that basically a victoria sponge, named for Queen Victoria, consists of equal weights of flour, eggs, sugar and butter, with eggs counting for about 2 oz each and of course baking powder as leavening. I found this recipe on the BBC, but because I was using larger tins, i went up to 6 oz of AP flour, butter and sugar, plus 2 tsp baking powder and 3 eggs. I used the creaming method, and added the eggs one at a time. And I used strawberry jam to sandwich the layers.
I liked the result, but I'm not a fan of white chocolate, and next time I'll make the classic, sandwiched with jam and dusted with confectioner's sugar.

Wednesday, 14 November 2007

that same day...

The same day, because I knew I always have some leftover cream (and this time ganache as well) I baked a sheet cake merging the regular sponge recipe (30:30:1) and the chiffon shortcake recipe.

The ingredients-

30*6 gm flour
30*6 gm sugar
1*6 eggs

These are the regular sponge ingredients, apart from this I also added ( going the chiffon way),

Half a tablespoon baking powder
Half a teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cold water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
Zest of half a lemon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Incase you don't have leftovers, for the filling you'll need-

Chocolate Ganache (Bring to the boil half a cup of cream in a saucepan, remove from heat and add around a quarter pound chopped semisweet chocolate to it, swirl the pan so the cream covers the chocolate, let it rest for five minutes, then whisk till smooth. Let cool, it will firm up as it does that.

And around half a cup of whipped cream, whipped with confectioner's sugar added according to your taste (around four tablespoons should be fine)

Then I proceeded as for the chiffon shortcake (check out the post before this one), with the exception that I used all the yolks as well, so that my yolks to whites ratio was 1:1. Also I noticed that using more water yields a softer cake. I cut the cake into two layers, sandwiched the layers with the ganache and then covered them with whipped cream, and it was good!

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 325F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Sift together the flour, the baking powder, salt and 150gm sugar.

3. Separate the eggs. Beat the egg yolks, vanilla essence, lemon zest, oil and water until smooth. Stir in the flour to form a smooth mass.

4. Beat the egg whites, slowly adding the remaining sugar, until stiff peaks are formed.

5. Fold in a quarter of the egg whites into the flour mixture. Fold in the rest.

6. Bake for 35-40 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

7. Let cool.

Assembling the cake:

Slice the cake into two layers. Sandwitch the layers with ganache. Cover with whipped cream.

Friday, 28 September 2007

Strawberry cake

Well, here is a cake I made for my husband's birthday last year. I followed Delia Smith's all-in-one-sponge-cake, but instead of halving the cake and doing a raspberry filling, I went with strawberries on top. It was delicious!