Yesterday I went off-book and made up a weird cake recipe. I can't say I'm completely in love with it, but it was a worthwhile experiment and I'm going to keep playing with it to see what I can come up with. I started with what was essentially a kasutera batter, in which whole eggs and sugar are beaten together until quite thick and foamy folded together with flour, but I added some extra flour, a little baking powder and a little oil and milk. The oil of course completely deflated the eggs (which is why I added baking powder), but I wanted to see if beating them affected the quality of the finished product. I did end up with a loaf that rose beautifully and had a very lovely, very fine crumb; however, the cake was fairly coarse once it cooled completely, and quite dry.
What I'd like to do is bake another cake with the same ingredients but with no beating of the eggs to see whether beating them made a difference despite the oil-induced deflation. Then I'd like to bake one with more oil or maybe some butter in order to try for a soft, moist cake.
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| It did come up beautifully though, and baked through without threatening to over-brown! All too rare in a cake recipe. |
To add some zazz I whipped up an eggless Bavarian cream and made some layers (Bavarian recipe below). The layers are so crazy uneven because I was in a terrific rush. I put this cake together in about ten frantic minutes, so think about the skill needed to achieve that before judging!
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| Also we didn't have any baking paper (I'm at my family's house in NYC) so I lined everything with foil... Looks kind of awesome, I have to say. |
I also took some dried mango and boiled it in sugar syrup, let it soak for a while, drained it and studded one of the layers of cream with it. I used the syrup as a soak for the cake layers, but they still managed to remain remarkably dry. To my surprise, this coarse texture ended up working with the soft Bavarian cream, and my family likes the cake quite a bit! I'll still want to play around with the recipe before I post it though.
Eggless Vanilla Bavarian Cream (adapted from festivalfoods.com)
1 Tbsp gelatin
2 Tbsp very cold water
2 cups whipping cream
1/2 cups milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Bloom the gelatin in the cold water for about five minutes.
Mix one cup of the cream with the milk, reserving the second cup of cream in the refrigerator. Put the cream and milk mixture over a medium heat and scald it, removing it from heat before it boils. Stir in the sugar and the salt, and stir in the bloomed gelatin until it dissolves completely. Chill it, adding in the vanilla once it's cooled but is not yet set (ten minutes or so). Once thickened, beat it until fluffy.
Separately, beat the reserved cup of cold cream until soft and pillowy. Fold it into the gelatin mixture, or beat it a bit if the gelatin is so set that it remains chunky after folding.
Pour the Bavarian into whatever mould is being used, lined with wax paper or wetted, or if using the Bavarian as layers of filling in a cake, build the layers immediately, using the pan in which the cake was baked in order to keep the Bavarian from squishing out as it sets. Here it helps to have very deep cake pans available, three or four inches works well.
So there we have it! I'm excited to be playing with vanilla cake and fruit combos. I am a committed chocolate person, but these flavors were great and I look forward to more fruit projects coming up, especially since I'll be hanging out in California for the next month and a half (starting the day after tomorrow!) and will be surrounded by gorgeous produce.
Next time I post it'll be from not-always-so-sunny Northern California! Maybe a fruit crisp or even a pie... yes...
Bake Hard!
Azara
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