Berries & Cream Cake

Here's a lovely dessert that comes together in minutes!

All you need is:

- Store bought angel food cake

- Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries, whatever you fancy

- Heavy cream

- Real vanilla extract (it's worth investing in the good stuff here because we're working with pure simple flavours)

- A few tbsp powder sugar

Begin by unmoulding your cake and placing it on a plate.

Handle your berries delicately and wash then lay them on a paper towel to dry, be careful not to squish them.

In a bowl pour your chilled heavy cream and add some vanilla, powder sugar (about 2 or 3 tbsps)

Whisk by hand or use a mixer/hand blender until it is creamy but still has a soft peak texture without seizing up too much.

Gently scoop the whipped cream all over the top of the cake.

Now layer all the berries on top and chill!

With the berries that didn't make the cut I threw them in a small pot with some sugar and as soon as they come to a boil I smashed them with a fork, ran them through the strainer and saved the juice. This makes a great sauce when plating.

Serve & Enjoy!


**Whenever there is whip cream on sight kitty comes by for a taste. He needed a good distraction while I shot the cake

Black Forest Cherry stuffed French Toast

Let Them Eat Cake

I was in the mood for baking and celebrating, but what was the occasion you ask? ... Nothing specific, maybe the weather warming up or feeling a little better after all these months of avoiding food and photography, but now I wanted to jump right back into it so I whipped up this pretty looking cake to share.

Served with fresh strawberries for the perfect girly indulgence.

CAKE

Ingredients for the cake layers:

1 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

6 large eggs

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 unsalted butter, melted

To make the cake:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter the bottom and sides of two 8" round cake pans. Cut a parchment paper circle to fit onto the bottom of each pan.

Sift the flour three times onto a sheet of parchment or wax paper.

Beat the eggs and sugar in the large bowl of your mixer, using the paddle attachment, for up to 10 minutes, until the volume has increased at least three times. The mixture should look thick, pale yellow, and bubbly.

Take the bowl off of the mixer. Sprinkle in half of the flour, folding it in with a hand-whisk just until combined; repeat with the rest of the flour.

Drizzle in the melted butter and whisk only until combined.

Divide the batter equally between the prepared cake pans.

Bake the layers for 20 to 25 minutes, until the cakes begin to pull away slightly from the sides of the pan. Cool the layers for 10 minutes before removing them from the pans. Peel off the parchment circles and let the layers cool completely before assembling the cake.

** My notes: I used red food colouring to the dye the cake pink, less for the lighter shade and more for the intense shade. Also on the dark pink I used cake flour instead of AP and that yield a cake with more holes, I'd stick with AP it's more dense but richer.   I obviously doubled the recipe above, or made it twice for each the lighter cakes and the darker ones. 

Frost with your favourite buttercream or whipped cream.

Thanks to Jane's Sweets and Baking Journal for the recipe

Raspberry dark chocolate cake!

I rarely go all out and make a cake, that's more my sisters department as she's an excellent baker but today I've had some help, for the most part and this cake was practically instant.

The cake part is a recipe for black forest sponge cake, recipe here The last time I've used this recipe was for a black forest cake and it was really delicious, light and spongy, like a bakery style cake.

The filling is pink, you may not be able to see that much in the picture but right now, about 24 hours since I've made it the color has darkened in the fridge. It's basically a whipped cream with homemade sweetened raspberry puree that I defrosted from last years raspberry picking trip.

When the cream comes to the soft peak stage the defrosted fruit puree is added in and then it's whipped up, the site here explains adding fruit purees to whipping cream, I was very worried about this stage because my buttercream split last time I mixed it with whipping cream so the thought of adding anything liquid to whipping cream terrified by but it went very well.

Finally it was frosted with a frozen ganache I had in the freezer as well for about 4 months now, I left it in the fridge overnight then let it come to room temperature and beat it with the paddle attachment while slowly adding some heavy cream to make it softer and more buttercream like (because ganache can be very stiff and hard)

A thin crumb coating went on first, then I let it sit an hour in the fridge and then the final layer was applied with the decorative raspberries and chocolate curls.

Super super easy cake, the dark chocolate raspberry combination is classic, do give it a try!