Strawberry Sandwich Cake
from
Small Cakes - from fondant fancies to florentines, by Roger Pizey-
Ingredients:
2 eggs
65g (9tsp) icing (confectioners') sugar, sifted. + extra for dusting
65g (9tsp) plain flour
10g (1tsbp) unsalted butter, melted
270g strawberries
50g seedless strawberry jam, warmed
1 large strawberry, for decoration
Sugar syrup
Chantilly cream
Sugar syrup:
100g caster sugar
100ml water
Place sugar and water in a pan. Cook over a low heat until clear, stirring continuously, then boil for a minute or so. Pass the liquid through a sieve. Remove from heat and leave to cool.
Chantilly cream:
250ml double (heavy) cream
32.5g icing sugar, sifted
1/2 tsp good-quality vanilla essence
Whisk the cream in a mixing bowl. Slowly add the icing sugar and vanilla essence, and whisk until the mixture becomes quite stiff.
For the cake:
Use a 6.5 X 1.5 inches (16cm x 3.5cm deep) tart ring.
1) Preheat oven to 170 degC.
2) In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs and icing sugar together until light, fluffy and quite stiff. (When you stick a spatula in, the mixture isn't watery).
3) Slowly fold in the flour, followed by the melted butter.
4) Place the lightly greased tart ring on a lightly greased baking tray and pour in the mixture.
5) Bake on the middle shelf for 20 minutes or until golden and springy to touch. Leave to cool in the ring for about 10 minutes, then turn out carefully on a wire rack.
6) Cut off the tops of the strawberries and slice thinly lengthways. Slice off raised part of sponge to make it leve, then slice the sponge horizontally through the middle. (If you don't have confidence slicing neatly into half, or don't have the right tools to cut, just bake the sponge cake twice:). )
7) Place one half white-side up back into the tart ring. Dip a pastry brush into the sugar syrup and dab the sponge until moist but not soaked. Next, brush on a layer of strawberry jam.
8) Arrange the strawberries, side-by-side, flat sides facing out, all around the edge of the sponge.
9) Using a small palette knife (flexible metal spatula), smooth half the chantilly cream over the base of the sponge and arrange the rest of the strawberries, flat sides down, over the top.
10) Spoon the rest of the cream onto the centre of the sponge and spread it over evenly, pushing some of it through the gaps between the strawberries to give a flush finish. Smooth over the top of cream.
11) Place second half of the sponge brown-side up over the cream. Press down lightly on the top to ensure a nice flat surface.
12) Place in the fridge until ready to serve.
13) To serve, remove the ring, sprinkle the top with icin sugar and garnish with a nice big strawberry, dipped in either a raspberry coulis or neutral glaze.
For the raspberry coulis: (I didn't do this cos didn't want to look for raspberries=p)
200g caster sugar
500g fresh or frozen raspberries
Place the sugar and raspberries in a blender, Blitz with the pulse button (of the blender), then pass through a sieve.
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Didn't know what to order for my twentieth birthday cake, so decided to bake my own. Muhaha. Chose this recipe from an early present from my bro- cake recipe book-, cos the picture looked really really prettaye. I must say my final outcome looked about 50% alike. LOL. And I arranged the strawberries at the side wrongly, I only realised at the end that in the picture in the book, the berries were placed upside down.
I used a 22cm diameter tart ring cos that was the smallest size at Phoon Huat. So what I did was to multiply the ingredients for the cake and chantilly cream by 2.4. Initially, I multiplied by 1.2, but the cake was too short to slice into half, so I baked the cake again n made more cream:). But the amount of ingredients is flexible, depending on how tall you want the cake to be.
Fluffy sponge cake.
Anyway, I replaced double cream with thickened cream (cos NTUC doesn't have double cream. The uncle at phoonhuat did say that whipped cream would be fine too.) and it turned out fine:D. Googled for the difference between double cream and thickened cream and saw that it was basically fat content that differed. Double cream is about more than 35% fat, and whipped cream (for whipping) is about 36-40% fat. As for thickened cream, I checked the contents and it was 35% fat. So, perhaps this can help to decrease the guilt level by a litttle bit. Lol. Placed the made chantilly cream in the fridge before I used it cos the cake took some time to cool down. It became easier to spread on the cake too. Also, I added around 1/4 tsp of baking powder cos plain flour alone looked too suspicious. The dusting of the icing on top of the cake didn't work out cos I spread the remaining chantilly cream on the top as well. So the icing sugar melted into the cream when I dusted some of it on the top):.
Taste-wise, my nice family members liked it:). It was a little bit sweet though, probably cos of the sugar syrup. But with some berries being sour, it was alright that the cake was sweeter. Yummms.
Tada~~ This was the final outcome. The cream is untidily spread on though so presentation-wise, it needs IMPROVEMENT. But how do the words "Happy Birthday" look? Okay I hope^^? The random brown circle beside the strawberry was a chocolate button from marks&spencers. Put 3 actually, bt the fat berry hid it behind its huge head.
This was the nicer side view:). I was quite happy that the strawberries on the side did not fall off when I cut the cake:).
This looks abit melted cos it took us quite long to find the lighter to light the candles. Hehe.
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More cakes to come after I finished the mad term papers and maybe after exams. Hoho:D.
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