Butterfly effect cake (No. 1)

We were invited to a birthday party, and I was to bring the cake. The birthday girl is a lovely and lively woman who's demeanor reminds me of a butterfly, so I had planned to make a two tier birthday cake with lots of butterflies flying around it.

The butter flies were made and ready for the cake, when the birthday party was cancelled..... and so I decided to make a cake for my colleagues - a Victoria Sponge, with lemon/clementine syrup and soft nougat:

My American and British friends seem to prefer Victoria sponge-type cake covered in royal icing or fondant, where as the Danes appear to like layered cakes with custard, cream and marzipan. Personally, I think Victoria sponge cake is often quite boring; dry and without much taste. So the butterfly effect cake was really an experiment in trying to get a Victoria sponge to actually taste of something:

The sponge is made of:
250 gram of caster sugar whisked white with 4 eggs.
250 gram of melted butter is added to the boule. Stir well and add
250 gram of flour + 2 table spoons of baking powder.
Pour into a well greased baking tray and bake for approx. 40 min at 175 degrees.

Make a syrup:
I had a handfull of clementines and a lemon at hand, leaving me with approx. 200 ml juice. Put 150 grams of sugar in a pot. Heat and add the juice while stirring. Turn the heat down and reduce the liquid.

Once the sponge was done, I took it out of the owen, let it sit for a few minutes to cool down, and then I cut it into three (horizontally).

The nougat was heated in a pot to make it runny (don't boil it!). The nougat will harden up, once its cooled down.

I poured 1/3 of the syrup over the bottom sponge, and added a think layer of each of the warm nougat, and placed the next sponge on top of that, and repeated the process until the last layer was soaked in syrup and the whole cake covered in nougat to give it a smooth surface.

Then I made a stiff royal icing (egg whites and icing sugar). Don't beat it as small air bobbles will form - and that's undesirable in royal icing. I added the colour and covered the cake, leave some royal icing for piping small flour on the cake...

A victoria sponge is very tasty made in this way, btw :-)

New Year's Eve Cake 2014

A festive end to fantastic New Year's Eve dinner and a fantastic year!

400 gram marzipan and icing sugar kneaded into a homogene pulp (the pulp should have been heated to approx. 50 degrees - but we forgot this step). Roll into a "sausage-shaped" of approx. 1,5-2 cm width, cut in smaller pieces and form rings and make a top. Bake the rings at 200 degrees until they look right :-). Pipe them with white royal icing and place on top of each other to form a tower. Eat with a glass of champagne :-)

Strawberry cake with pink icing cake

My daughter got to choose which dessert she wanted for her birthday, and she opted for a strawberry layered cake with gluten free cake cut in to 4 thin sponges, whole strawberries, whipped creme and chocolate custard. Not the pretties of cakes, but it was really yummy!

Snowman (monster) cupcakes

Caroline had told me that she wanted snowman cake to hand out to her friends at the kindergarten, so I thought 30 cupcake snowman would be just the thing.....

The base was chocolate Victoria sponge with vanilla syrup and the heads were so called Oatmeal balls (Danish "havregrynkugler", which is a traditional and very popular Christmas sweet in Denmark and then drizzled with desiccated coconut. The whole thing was covered in Italian meringue butter creme (which had become way too soft).

I had hoped for a less messy look, but the kids clearly recognized that the snowman look and none of the snowmen survived the day, but that's the fate of snowmen :-)

 

Christmas tree cake 2014 with candy

No December without a Christmas tree.... and this year, I had decided to try a more simple version that in previous years - namely using candy for ornament on the tree, rather than making it my self out of fondant. It's cheating of course, but the young Caroline who helped me seemed to prefer the candy version (could have something to do with the fact that she got to eat most of it.....)

And the cake.... well, yes, it's P's brown Christmas cake: 100 grams of butter, 100 grams of sucker and 100 grams of syrup is melted. Once cooled down a bit, mixed with 1 tea spoon of natron dissolved in 1 dl of buttermilk + 2 tea spoons of cinnamon, 1 tea spoon of clove and 1 tea spoon of cardamom + 250 grams of flour. Placed in a pan. Baked for approx. 20 min at 180 degrees.

Pretty simple Christmas cake

Johan had promised his colleagues to bring a cake to work,,, and it is December... so the cake baking kitchen is open......

The cake... well, it was the standard Christmas cake: P's brown Christmas cake :-)

100 grams of butter, 100 grams of sucker and 100 grams of syrup is melted. Once cooled down a bit, mixed with 1 tea spoon of natron dissolved in 1 dl of buttermilk + 2 tea spoons of cinnamon, 1 tea spoon of clove and 1 tea spoon of cardamom + 250 grams of flour. Placed in a pan. Baked for approx. 20 min at 180 degrees.

Christmas wreath cake

It's finally, finally, finally December...... I have been longing for this, since sometime in March and 1st Sunday of advent was celebrated making this christmas wreath cake for my colleagues:

The cake was "P"'s brown christmas cake: 100 grams of butter, 100 grams of sucker and 100 grams of syrup is melted. Once cooled down a bit, mixed with 1 tea spoon of natron dissolved in 1 dl of buttermilk + 2 tea spoons of cinnamon, 1 tea spoon of clove and 1 tea spoon of cardamom + 250 grams of flour. Placed in a pan. Baked for approx. 20 min at 180 degrees.

The cake was covered in butter cream with cocoa and the covered in marzipan and decorate with small sucker pearls.