Semla Cake - Something new for shrove tuesday?

So it was my husbands birthday this week and this was something that kind of just snuck up on us(as it does). I had just finished the Baby Quilt Cake a couple days earlier and my cake making patience was spend for a while. 

While trying to make a decision on what kind of cake to make my husband for his birthday, Semlas were mentioned and then it hits me. it muuust be possible to make a cake out of semlas right? Like just making a larger bun or maybe two that you can stack? HMMmmmmm.......

Anyone who has not heard of a Semla, has to change that right now. Like NOW! You will LOVE it. In Sweden it's what we eat on shrove tuesday, and then we have a second day for pancakes ;-).. A Semla is a sweet cardamon bun cut in half, the insides of the bottom are scooped out and put in a bowl together with some cream and marsipan (or almond paste). you mix this together to make a lovely smooth filling which you fill the scooped out bit with. You then whip some cream, and put a generous dollop(love that word) on top and cover the whole thing with the top bit of the bun. The last touch is some powdered sugar sieved on top.

The traditional way of eating it according to my mom is to put it in a deep plate with some warm milk, but that has never appealed to me. Eating it straight is not just good enough, but TO DIE FOR. YUM!

So this is what I decided to do. A SEMLA CAKE.

I found this recipe on Recepten.se, but I have adapted it slightly - I thought it loked brilliant as it gave you the recipe to make your own almond paste (swedish almond paste is not the same as the British marsipan, though I'm sure it would still be yummy if you used it)

Semla Cake

the yummiest cake ever.

For The Bun:

100 g butter

3 dl milk (in my opinion full fat)

50 g fresh yeast or the equivalent in dry yeast

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cardamon

1 dl sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp hjorthornssalt or of you don't have that at home replace it with 1 tsp of baking powder

almost 1 liter of all purpose flour (not self raising)

Making your own Almond Paste Filling:

200 g almonds

1 1/2 dl milk

1 1/2 dl sugar

Using store-bought almond paste or marsipan:

400 g almond paste

Desired amount of cream(more for a smoother filling)

The scooped out crumbs

For topping and garnishing:

1 egg for eggwash

8 dl whipped cream

Powdered/icing sugar for sieving over
The scooped out crumbs

How to:

Buns:

Take out the egg so it becomes room tempered. Break the yeast into crumbs and place in a bowl. Melt the butter and pour in the milk stirring until it becomes 37 degrees Celsius (40 if using dry yeast). Pour a little of the mixture over the yeast at a time stirring to incorporate it as you go along. Add the salt, cardamon, sugar and egg. Add the hjorthornssalt/baking powder and the flour a little at a time working the dough, stretching the gluten as much as possible. A trick I use is to take a little ball and try stretching it out into a square/rectangle to se if it holds and that I can look through it like a really dirty window ;-).  That's when it's done. It's then time for the proofing. This is when you let the dough rest so that the yeast can do it's bit. In this case let it proof for about 30 min. 

You then put the dough on the work surface and do your best to deflate all the hard work that yeast has done ;-)... You pound that thing and stretch it like nobodies business! Then split the dough into 2 equal parts rolling them into balls and then gently spreading the balls into larger flat buns (they will rise up during proofing and in the oven).

Put the oven on 200 celsius or 175 for a fan oven. Place them on the baking sheet (I placed them on the same one as I do not have a fan oven, but otherwise place ether on 2 separate sheets). Proof for a further 30 min. Brush with the egg wash and bake in the middl elf the oven for 15-20 min until they have a nice color. Place under a kitchen towel on a cooling rack and wait until completely cool to start prepping the actual cake.

Making the filling from scratch:

Cut off the top of the buns (maybe 1/3 from the top), and scoop out the insides of the bottom parts.

Place almonds, varmed up milk, sugar and the crumbs from the inside of the buns in a mixer and run until its a nice smooth paste. Fill the insides of the bottom part with the paste. 

Making the filling with store bought almond paste or marsipan:

Cut off the top of the buns (maybe 1/3 from the top), and scoop out the insides of the bottom parts. In a bowl combine the almond paste, cream and the insides of the buns and mix smooth with an electric mixer.  Fill the insides of the bottom part with the paste. 

Garnishing:

Whip the cream and dollop (still love that word) or pipe the cream onto the filling of each of the layers. Now stack the two buns on top of each other take one of the lids (The second I would scoop out any left over filling and eat on the spot ;-)) and place on top ot the cream. Then sieve over the icing sugar.

Serve!

And ENJOOOOOOOY!

J.

Ellie's 3rd Birthday - Minnie Mouse Cake

First of all... Excuse the quality of my photos... These were taken before my elevated awareness of the importance of good photos...

Ok. So I know this entry is a little late. Ellie is almost 5 and this is her 3rd birthday cake and 

decorations.

We were living in Darwen, near Manchester in Lancashire England at the time and I finally had a kitchen that was big enough and had enough work surface to make a proper dessert table. My first actually! 

The dessert table included:

The Cake

Salty Caramel filled Cookie Dough Balls

Make-your-own-Mickey Sugar Cookies

RiceKrispieTreat-pops

Chocolate Covered Oreos decorated like little mickeys

Buttercream covered Sugar Cookies

Rockpops (homemade)

Watermellon-Pops

Chocolate Mousse in shot glasses

Caramel Popcorn

Jelly filled Orange Slices

Anyone who is an avid Pinterest user will recognize a lot of the ideas ;-)... Let's just say that this was the beginning of my relationship with that wonderful world of Pinterest. A relationship that has just continued to blossom ;-)...

<3

Also I want to add that the kids DID have dinner before they got to dig into the deserts, but they STILL managed to get through most of it! Was mightily impressed... though their parents did help too ;-)..

If anyone is interested in the recipes and how to's, and I'll se if I can throw together a tutorial!

Enjoy!

J.

American Style Chocolate Sponge

American style Chocolate sponge

Adapted from Buddy Valastro's (Cake Boss) original recipe

3 1/2 dl (100 ml) of cake flour (for every dl of normal flour you remove 1 Tbsp and add 1 Tbsp of cornstarch, sieved together a few times - in this case you remove 3 1/2 Tbsp's)

3 1/2 dl of sugar

115 grams of room-tempered butter

80 ml of cocoa butter

1 tsp baking soda(bicarbonate of soda)

1/4 of a tsp baking powder

Approximately 1 dl or 100 g of melted chocolate (I would use a darker one)

1 1/5 dl or 120 ml of hot water

4-5 eggs (depending on size) room-tempered

1 1/5 dl buttermilk (I would measure up just over 1 dl of normal full fat milk and add 10 ml of white vinegar, let stand until it looks split)

Start by prepping your ingredients. For me this makes the whole process enjoyable to have everything ready. Make your cake flour if you don't already have it at home, make your buttermilk, and melt your chocolate. Also prepare your tins. In this case use 2x 9" or 24 cm cake tins. I went ahead and did what you aren't supposed to... I messed with the sizes and used all different sizes since I didn't need 3x 24 cm cakes, but 1x 12 cm, 1x 15 cm and 1x 20 cm. I can't honestly say I recommend it, but it worked fine, I just had to keep an eye on them. When I did use this recipe with a 24 cm tin I STILL had to keep an eye on them as you don't want them to be overdone.

Right, so now you are ready to start.

Heat the oven to 175 Celsius or 350 Fahrenheit.

Add flour, sugar, butter, cocoa, baking powder and soda to the bowl of a tabletop mixer with the "K" attachment or aka paddle attachment, an electric handmixer would work brilliantly as well. If you are like me, not liking four everywhere and don't have a cover for your mixer than use a towel around it or start by kneading the butter into the rest so that it gets dispersed more evenly before turning your mixer to low. I usually mix until it has a sandy consistency, this usually takes approximately 1 min. If you have lumps that just wont disperse, stop the mixer and knead it with your fingers and then turn back on.

Turn off before adding the melted chocolate, mix until incorporated (maybe a min.) then pour in the hot water slowly while the motor is still going. Stop to scrape the sides and bottom with a rubber spatula. Then add one egg at a time waiting with the next one till the first is completely incorporated. Once they are all added once again stop and scrape sides with spatula, mix for a little while longer just to make sure (a min or so). With the mixer still on low-medium speed add the buttermilk or vinegar-milk and mix for a min or so to make sure it's all incorporated. I would once again scrape the sides and makes sure it's all mixed. 

Before you throw them in the oven, make sure the batter is at around 21-23 degrees Celsius. This will prevent it from crowning (the ugly mountain that can appear in the middle).

Bake for approximately 30 min. But for me it has always been more like 35-40. So I usually say CHECK on it at 30. The cake is supposed to feel springy to the touch, or a toothpick should come out clean after poked through the middle. 

Cool in the tins until COMPLETELY cool, I usually cover with a cloth to ensure they don't dry out in the process. when you turn them out you can sprinkle with sugar as to prevent sticking.

I want to reiterate, this is different than the original recipe, but  it is what has worked best for me! 

Good Luck!

J.

Baby-Quilt Cake.

Baby-Quilt Cake.

After much deliberation and pinterest research for inspiration(my lifeline, as I'm sure it's yours), I turned to my box of patchwork cutters and found a baby blanket cutter! 

My initial idea was to just cover part of the cake with the blanket, like draped over it or something, but once I started actually covering it... I realized I wanted the FULL effect! 

The cake itself is an american style chocolate cake. Filled with a whipped cream cheese frosting and Dulce de Leche(made from scratch). I plastered it with vanilla buttercream and used a THIN marshmallowfondant-"lid" that I could "glue" the patches on to. You can find all the recipes in the menu to the right!

I started by making the sponges and the dulce de leche. I made the sponges a week ahead of time, I wrapped it tightly in cling film after completely cooled and put it in the freezer (makes it easier to carve through the middle when you take it out). The dulce de leche is good in the fridge for up to a month so you can make that whenever(how anyone has been ABLE to keep it for that long without eating it by the spoonful I do not know.. total mystery!!).

I then went ahead and made the flowers and leaves (tutorial to come).

2 days before "delivery" I make the filling and buttercream that will cover the cake or as we say in Sweden: the "plaster". I also will take out the sponges and once slightly thawed I cut through the cake creating 3 separate cake layers or 2 filling layers (hope you get what I mean). I take the top piece of sponge and use it as the bottom upside down, pipe a wall of buttercream around the edge and spread the middle with a thin layer of dulce de leche and fill the rest with the WCC-frosting, add the middle layer of sponge and repeat the process. The reason you turn the sponge upside down is that you get a nice flat top and nice sharp edges as a canvas for your buttercream.

I then "plaster" the cake I will soon have a blogg entry on how to do this to get the best, sharpest flattest, most gorgeous edges ever! By first crumb-coating it and then adding the desired amount of plaster.

I will also have a blogg entry on how to cover with marshmallow fondant. On this cake I covered with a very thin layer as I was going to add a second layer in the form of the patches, and you don't want an extremely thick layer of fondant. 

I then stacked the cake, using doweling and thin plastic cake sheets to separate. I will also try to give you a tutorial on how to do this.

Once all this was done I could finally start with my favorite part... The DECORATING! The colors I used to color the patches was wiltons royal blue, golden yellow, pink as well as sugarflairs holly green.

I had to play around a bit with how I wanted the patches to look. Did I want random sizes, perfect squares, or like I ended up doing pieces that started big and got smaller with each tier.

Now I am not an organized person and if I was to do this again I would certainly plan ahead a bit more and partition around the cake into 12 equal sized sections (not hard to do so I don't know why I didn't). Somehow I still managed to fit in relatively same sized pieces. I rotated the colors: pink, blue, yellow and green.  Then on the next layer I moved the color over one step, as seen on the pictures. The pieces that merge the tiers together had to be narrowed slightly which there is no way of explaining how I did this, as I did it by eye (so good luck;-)). All I can say is to keep trying to fit each piece, if it's not perfect it's ok, there will be stitches that can cover if there are small gaps. This is how I continued the whole way up until I go to the top where I patched it with 4 equal sized (one of each color) triangles to create a round circle-patch on top. 

I used a pizza cutter to cut out the patches and simply brushed water to stick them to the the fondant layer already on the cake.

If you want to use patchwork cutters the way I did with the blue patches make sure you use the stamps before the patches dry. This is something i did not do and regretted it, as some of the pacifier did not come out properly.

Another thing I would do different next time I make a similar cake is to decorate the patches before you add the stitching. I did the reverse and I therefore have gaps and inconsistencies that I otherwise would not have... had i done it correctly.

How I decorated each "fabrik"

Blue: I used a pacifier shaped patchwork cutter to stamp a pattern on the cake.

Pink: using paste colors and water (i would use vodka next time) I hand painted little flowers with stalks (would probably skip the stalks next time for this pattern) - I will make a tutorial on how to hand pain these flowers as well. 

Green: I cut out white heart shapes sticking them to the patches evenly, then piping dots between each heart

Yellow: I hand painted these lines with a thin brush and paste color and water. Next time I would use a ruler of some sort to make the lines straighter.

I simply used royal icing to pipe the stitches, starting with the cross-stitches in the corners and then just added as many stitches as possible between them. The more detailed the more realistic :-).

Binding the flowers in my desired arrangement with the wire I then stuck them to the cake with a small patch of royal icing so that they wouldn't move and fall off while transporting it.

For once I had time to photograph.

I rarely EVER have time for this and after these photos I realize that it has made ALL the difference. Taking a picture with my kitchen from the 1930's as a backdrop will NEVER do again! And also, I really hope that I can keep this snow for a while, or more if possible... I LOOOVE the contrast! I even like the contrast of the grey of our concrete stairs leading up to our house, with the brightness of the cake. Love it.

I really hope you have gotten inspired to try a quilted cake! It's time consuming, yes. But so worth it! In spite of all the issues I see with the cake (trust me there are hundreds) I am happy with it. The response i have gotten from it has been amazing and something i never could have imagined!

Thank you guys for reading my little inspirational blog, and my personal recipe-book!

ENJOY

J.

Salted Dulce de Leche (from scratch)

SALTED DULCE DE LECHE 

(from scratch)

-Easily the best dulce de leche I have ever had

2-3 hours to make, so plan ahead!

1 liter full-fat milk

3-3 1/2 dl Sugar

1 vanilla bean split open and scraped

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Add first 3 ingredients(including vanilla pod) to a tall saucepan and bring to a simmer. Once the sugar has dissolved add baking soda and salt and stir. Reduce heat to low to keep the mixture at a small simmer. Stir occasionally or it can simmer over.

 Once the mixture starts to brown (maybe after an hour) remove the pod. Continue to cook. When it starts to thicken use a spoon to taste it, at this point I usually add some extra salt as I like it with a bit of a punch, but it is completely up to you and your tastebuds. Continue to cook till reduced, and thickened to a pudding consistency. It will also have a caramel color, quite dark. It will get thicker once cooled, but I usually pull a spoon through and if doesn't immediately close back up again it's good(hope you get what I'm saying).

Pour into a jar to cool.

Recommended usage: cake filling, with ice-cream, banoffee pie... possibilities are endless!

ENJOY!

J.

Changing it up a bit.

Changing it up a bit.

-And not just the fact that I am posting at all ;-)...

Leaves changing color in Swedish autumn,
one of the many lovely things about moving home.

My blogg has up to this point not been one for recipes and such, as my initial idea was for it to be a source of inspiration rather than anything else. However, I plan on sharing more of the recipes I use. As ALL of them I have tried and tested many times to find the perfect one. 

A little Explanation.

I moved (back) to Sweden just over a year ago now, and there has been some adjustments as to how I make my cakes. In the UK it was the norm to fill and "plaster" the cakes with buttercream and buttercream only. The fact that it was sweet was fine, it's a dessert, they are supposed to be sweet ;-)! However coming to Sweden I had to change the basic structure of my cakes. Often when people ask for a filling they will want a mousse, or a custard based one. They will sometimes even want plain whipped cream. In many ways this has opened up doors to new ideas for me, but it was also a huge stress factor in my cake making...

....Why you ask? Ok so I have something to admit. There are things I like better than constructing a cake... don't get me wrong I love to bake and put flavors together... but it's the decorating I LOOOOVE. And when the constructing goes wrong as it often can with the swedish way of making the cake; I get MAJORLY stressed. Like, bang my head against a wall repeatedly kind of stressed ;-)! GAAAAaaaaah.

Things that can go wrong (when you don't have a clue what you are doing as I didn't in the beginning) include: a mousse that won't set, the fragile sponge breaking and tearing, the same sponge falling apart and crumbling as you try to carve into it, a mousse that you thought was set not being set and only finding out when the cake has already been filled and you see the sides bulging from the weight, covering a cake with marsipan and finding out after that if you plaster a cake with cream and cover it with marsipan the marsipan never stood a chance.. it will melt.. it's just a matter of time... and finding that out after you have decorated a cake is never fun. 

My birthday cake and I.

....Lets just say there are many cakes I have made this last year that have not made it out on instagram of Facebook...

BUT as clueless (and sometimes hopeless) as I felt as I trial and error'd my way through many a' cakes this year, I have also learned a lot, and would love to share my knowledge.

Those of my readers who are from the UK I recommend trying to make a cake the "swedish" way... because they are so good.. once you get it right ;-). I hope that I will be able to describe things as well as I can so that you won't have to make the same mistakes as I have. 

The other thing I have done is take the best of all my influences. One of the things that I have struggled the most with is the sponge itself. I have tried EVERY swedish recipe that people have recommended to me, and to my tastebuds they have just not been right(not saying they aren't right for other people). I like my sponges a little denser, based on more fat.. who doesn't love a little fat ;-)... the swedish sponges rarely have any fat at all. They are often eggwhite based to bring air into them and the higher they rise the better you have accomplished your task :-)! In will share my favorite swedish sponge recipe as well just incase you want to try it, but just so you know that I prefer the american styled ones.

So yes. That is the change. I will be more engaged in passing my hard earned knowledge on to you. Knowledge that I wish I had when I started. My hope is that because I am writing in english, readers all over the world can try how cakes are made in sweden, because it's different, but so tasty.

ENJOY (the new blog)

J.