Spring Birthday Cake Request: Thanks Gesine!

"David has requested a white or yellow cake with fresh fruit. Would you be able to make one for his Birthday BBQ?"Now, as much as I love it when I provide a successful dessert to a group of friends, there is nothing better than being requested to bake a friend's Birthday cake.

The request check-list was: Fresh fruit, white/yellow cake.... the rest was up to me. First I poked around Gesine Bullock-Prado's baking blog G Bakes, a blog I have been following for the past three years. Gesine's recipes provide successful results that have provided me with an excellent blend of enticing options with just the right about of challenge for my baking level. Just know that these recipes usually require a larger amount of ingredients and can be pricey if you are not buying in bulk. 

Prepping the kitchen on day 1: Pastry Cream!

As much as I would like to spend all my time baking, I do have a working life outside of a kitchen and with the Birthday party on Saturday I actually started preparing for the cake on Wednesday. One of my favorite recipes of Genine's is her pastry cream. I've used the pastry cream in a few different desserts and I thought that it would be perfect to put inside the cake with some fresh fruit. Delish! You can find Gesine's recipe for pastry cream in her cookbook Sugar Baby. The pastry cream took about an hour and when I was finished I popped the warm cream in the fridge to cool and the rest of the night was mine. To do with as I pleased. 

Thursday night I made the cake. I only had one 8" cake pan so this took a little while as each took about 40 min. to bake. For the cake I used Gesine's Vanilla Cake recipe but switched the vanilla extract with lemon. I also added some blueberries to the recipe and it turned out great!                               

Once the three cakes were cool, I wrapped them up in some cling wrap and placed them in the fridge so that they would stay fresh for Saturday. 

Friday was filling and stacking. I started by making some simple syrup, which is 1 cup sugar and 1 cup of water warmed over medium heat until the sugar has melted. I added some lemon extract to it. While the syrup cooled I brought out the cakes from the fridge and placed the first round on my cake stand. 

With three layers I noticed that my pastry cream might not be enough to fill both, or at least, I thought it would be lacking for center gooey-goodness. I still had some cream left over so I whipped that up with 1 tbs of powdered sugar for some whipped cream. Yep, perfect with fresh fruit. 

Whirring away at some heavy cream.

 So this cake is taking its sweet time and a lot of mine. Still, dividing the process up over a few days makes it more enjoyable when you only have a task or two at a time. At this point I had my cool cakes at the ready, pastry cream and whipped cream and room temperature. Next step, the fresh fruit. I decided on strawberries for the inside and blueberries for the outside.

Fresh fruit is the best

I topped bottom layer of lemon/blueberry cake with some of the simple syrup (keeps things moist), added some pastry cream, and topped that with about half a cup of chopped fresh strawberries.

Cake+simple syrup+pastry cream+strawberries= an excellent start

Before I added on the second layer I dolloped on some of the fresh whipped cream. I was getting pretty excited about this new addition to the cake.

Whipped cream fills the cake out nicely. 

I repeated the same filling rout for the second layer: cake, simple syrup, pastry cream, strawberries, whipped cream, top layer. I finished the layers off with a final brush of the simple syrup before wrapping the entire thing in plastic wrap. Before placing this baby in the fridge I slid on a cake round and then put a heavy cutting board on top. My hope was to flatten the top of the cake while keeping it all together with cake round and I am happy to report that it worked!

Ready for decoration. 

 Cool and moist cake with a beautifully flat top!

 For the frosting I returned to Sugar Baby for the Swiss buttercream recipe. This was my first time using it and I will most definitely be using it in the future.

4 sticks of butter... you might not want to knowthat

My Sugar baby got hit by a few errant splatters from a minor buttercream explosion.

For the decorations I found this beautiful idea off of Lisa Hubbard's photography site. No recipe but the image speaks for itself!

The final cake

You might not find the perfect recipe in its own, but you can combine many of your favorites to create a great dessert to remember. The cake was a success and I am happy that I could sweeten David's 47th Birthday!

Fancy Pants Pop Tarts

I grew up in a sugar free household which meant that there was nothing I craved more than the sugar coated, melted toxic goodness of a pop tart. They were few and far between but damn, those were the best.

Today I decided to do a bit of a throwback to the good old pop tart but with the palate of an adult in mind.

Traditional pie crust:

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour 
• 2 sticks cold butter 
• 1 tsp salt 
• 1-2 tbs cold water

Mix the flour and salt together in a medium bowl. Chop the sticks of butter into nice little pieces and roll your sleeves up because it's about to get messy! Using your hands, massage the butter into the flour/salt mix. Once everything seems to be well blended but just barely held together, add 1/2 tbs of water and work into dough. Keep adding the water a little at a time until the dough feels like it is holding together without being sticky to the touch. 

 Roll out into a rectangle. Fold in the top and bottom of the rectangle so they touch in the middle. Proceed to fold in the sides. Flip the "envelop" you've just created, roll out into another rectangle and repeat two more times.

Folding away

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll out the dough until it is nice and thin. With a knife, slice the dough into rectangles, I made mine about 2" x 4".

 Filling:

• 1 cup jam (I used strawberry)
• 8 oz white chocolate
• 1/2 almonds pulverized! 

In a food processor, blend the almonds keeping a few chunks floating around. You can add your white chocolate to the food processor or you can chop the chocolate into very fine pieces. 

Large white chocolate bar sliced into little crumbs

  On half of our rectangles, place a tablespoon of jam in the center and spread out leaving a little room around the edge. Sprinkle almond and white chocolate mix on top of jam, sandwiching with a second rectangle.

Into the oven they go!

  Using a fork, pinch edges together and poke a few holes into the top.

Egg Wash:

• 1 Egg
• 2 tbs water

Whisk the egg and water together. Brush the tops of your tarts with the egg wash and pop them into the oven for 8-10 min until the tops are golden brown.

The Yellow teacup spies oozy goodness.

 Once the pop tarts are cool they are ready for some icing.

Icing:

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup corn syrup
• 1 tsp water
• food coloring 

Mix all ingredients together until you get a nice thick mixture. If you want your icing to be a little more running, just add water a TINY bit at a time. Add some food coloring and you're ready to decorate.

Teacup approves of the cooling process

Yummy pink frosting for our strawberry pop tarts 

First bite of a fresh out of the oven fancy pants pop tarts

Cheers!

 A perfect mix of flaky crust, gooey jam, crunchy almonds, and sweet frosting on top. Adulthood is not too shabby!