How to make a typical Danish sponge cake

In Denmark the sponge cake is the most popular cake for any celebration. Especially for birthdays. It most often consist of 3 vanilla sponge layers sandwiched with pastry cream, jam, fruit and then covered in glaze and whipped cream. Other common fillings are whipped cream mixed with fruit, mousses and bavarois type fillings. The cake I am going to demonstrate here was made for my fathers birthday last weekend. It consists of chocolate sponge layers with an easy strawberry mousse, decorated with glaze and creme chantilly.

The sponge can be a little tricky. It is leavened only by the eggs, which makes it very important to FOLD the ingredients, never stir or beat. Overmixing will flatten your dough. Eggs must be room temperature to hold the largest volume possible. The butter must be cooled, or it will flatten the dough. And always, always sift the flour and cocoa. This will aerate the flour and help making the cake light. The sponge layers are quite dry and thin compared to your typical butter cake. Only ½ inch tall. This type of sponge cake should always be made a day ahead to give the filling time to soak the layers. This is what makes it so delicious.
The cake is very light, so it only serves 12.

Sponge cake
Makes one 8" cake to serve 12

4 large eggs (250 grams egg in total)
165 grams sugar
120 grams flour
30 grams cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
60 grams melted, cooled butter

Start by melting and cooling the butter. Preheat the oven to 190 C (375 F). Prepare an 8" round pan by brushing it with melted butter. Use a springform with removable bottom. This will help you assemble the cake later on.

Beat eggs and sugar on medium-high speed for several minutes until sugar is completely dissolved and a thick mousse has formed. When you drop a ribbon of batter from the beaters, it should be visible for about 30 seconds. This is very important!
Add the sifted flour and cocoa in 3 parts and gently fold into the eggs. Use a large slotted spoon or a large whisk for this, taking care not to overmix and deflate the batter. Add the butter with the last flour.

Immediatly pour into the pan and bake for about 35 minutes, depending on your oven. Do not open the oven door the first 20 minutes, or your cake might fall. Test with a toothpick to see if its done, and let it cool a bit in the pan before flipping it out on a rack to cool completely.

While it cools, you can make the strawberry mousse.

Strawberry mousse
500 grams strawberries (frozen, thawed strawberries are best)
100 grams sugar
½ vanilla bean
4 gelatin sheets

250 ml heavy cream

Heat the strawberries, the sugar and the vanilla bean gently in a saucepan. Let it simmer until the berries are mushy, about 10 minutes. Remove the vanilla bean, split it and scrape the seeds into the pan. With an immersion blender, puree the strawberries. Remove from heat.
Soak the gelatin sheets for around 10 minutes and shake off excess water. Melt the sheets in the warm strawberry puree. Stir until they have melted completely and let the puree cool to room temp. Put it in the fridge for faster cooling, but be careful that it doesn't set.
Whip the cream to stiff peaks and fold into the strawberries. The mousse is ready to fill into the cake now.

With a large serrated knife, split the sponge into 3 thin layers (about ½ inch). Put the bottom layer into the springform. The cake will be assembled upside down. Spread half the strawberry filling on top of the cake. Add another layer and spread the other half of the filling on top of it. Top with the third and last layer. Make sure the cake is level. Wrap everything in plastic wrap and refridgerate overnight or at least 5 hours. The gelatin will set and make the cake stable.

Take the cake out of the fridge and remove the plastic wrap. Run a spatula along the edge to loosen the cake from the springform. Place a cake board on top and flip the whole thing over. Don't worry, this cake is light as a feather. Remove the springform and you now have a perfect sponge cake. Unfortunately the filling smeared a bit and is hiding the middle layer on the photo, but if you look closely you can see it's there.

For the glaze mix 1 eggwhite with as much powdered sugar as it takes to make a thick glaze. It should be runny enough to flatten in about 10 seconds, but not so runny that you can see the cake through it. Thin with water if needed.
If you have a favorite cookie glaze, by all means use it. It's the same thing.
Take a few tablespoons of the glaze and tint it red. Put it in a piping bag with a #3 tip. Spread the white glaze over the top of the cake. With the red glaze, pipe a spiral on top. It should flatten out and "merge" with the white glaze if you have the right consistency.
To make the spiderweb pattern: Mark 10 or 12 points on the cake. Draw lines with a knife from the edge to the middle. Between these lines, drag the knife from the middle to the edge. Easy!

Beat 100 ml heavy cream with 2 tbsp powdered sugar and a bit of vanilla to make creme chantilly. Put it in a piping bag with a 1M star tip and pipe large rosettes all the way around the edge. Place a rosette in the middle. The cake is now ready to eat.
It is highly perishable and must be kept in the fridge, where it will last 2 days max.


*note-Gourmet Sleuth has a great grams conversion calculator.
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/gram_calc.htm

Source for gelatine sheets
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/search.asp?search=gelatin+sheets

("Silver" grade clear leaf gelatin sheets from Germany. approximately 3" x 8". 3-4 sheets are equivalent to 1 envelope of Knox brand gelatin. --source-Gourmet Sleuth)



Tutorial and Photography by Sif Jensen- all rights reserved 2009
Tutorial or photos cannot be reproduced in any form without permission from
author.

How to make lemon sponge petit fours

Petit fours are tiny cakes and pastries. The name is french and means "tiny oven". The look and taste of a petit four varies greatly from country to country. In my country, Denmark, petit fours are usually small piped cakes made from a mixture of almond paste and eggwhite, that are baked and decorated with candied fruit, chocolate, jam or nuts. But most other recipes of petit fours I have seen, are made from cake and icing. The kind I will show here are made from an egg yolk sponge. The recipe produces a moist, dense sponge that is flexible, easy to handle and not too sweet. This caters to European tastebuds. You can use any recipe you like, if you want an American style petit four instead. Just bake your favorite yellow or white cake in 1" layers. Split the layer in two and sandwich with filling. Proceed as shown.

Start by making the cake. This recipe is from the Lambeth Method of Cake Decorating and Practical Pastries, by Joseph Lambeth. I added lemon zest. For a non-lemony cake, leave it out.

Dobois sponge
recipe makes one 16"x16" layer (40x40 cm)

4 large eggyolks (80 grams)
1 large egg
3½ Tbsp sugar (42 grams)
25 grams almond paste
1 tsp lemon zest

3 large eggwhites (115 grams)
2 Tbsp sugar (25 grams)

3/4 cup flour (70 grams)

Preheat the oven to 400F (200C) and put a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet or in a rectangle pan.

Mix almond paste and the egg to a paste. Add yolks, lemon zest and sugar. Beat until light and fluffy.
In another bowl, whisk eggwhites and sugar to a glossy meringue. Fold into eggyolk mixture.
Sift flour and fold into the eggs. Be careful not to overmix the dough as it will flatten. Since there is no baking powder or baking soda in this cake, the air incorporated into the eggs is the only leavening agent there is.



Spread the batter into the baking sheet. It should be fairly thin, about 1/8" (0.5 cm). Bake for apprx 6 minutes until golden. Keep an eye on it so the edges won't burn. Transfer to cooling rack and cover with a clean kitchen towel. Let cool completely.



When the cake is cool, turn the cake upside down on a fresh piece of parchment paper and peel the paper off the back. Be careful or it will tear.



Trim the cake and cut 4 squares, equal in size.



Spread a thin layer of lemon curd on 3 of the squares. Position on top of each other, placing the layer without lemon curd on top.
And now! Don't do what I did. I cut the pieces immediatly because I was in a hurry, which caused not-so-clean cuts. What you should do is to cover the cake and refrigerate or even better, freeze, for a few hours, preferably overnight. Then you can cut into squares about 1.5x1.5" (4x4 cm).

Place the squares on a cooling rack while you mix the poured fondant. Put a baking sheet with parchment paper under to catch the fondant drippings.



Poured fondant
2 cups powdered sugar (275 grams)
2 Tbsp corn syrup or glucose
1/4 cup half water and half lemon juice (0.5 dl)
Yellow food coloring

For non-lemony cake, use all water.
Mix in a small saucepan and heat very gently on the lowest setting of your stove. The fondant should never be hot, but just slightly warm. Stir gently. Pour over the cakes, making sure every corner and side is covered. The drippings are scraped back in the saucepan, reheated and poured again until every cake is covered. If your cakes are nice and cold you should have no crumbs in the fondant. Otherwise you have to sieve it.
And this is where my laziness shows - the poured fondant reveals every single flaw I made when I cut unrefridgerated cake. Don't be like me!

The red spots demonstrates a common flaw - a naked corner. Pour more fondant over until completely covered and make sure to check every cake from all sides.

Let the fondant set a few hours and then decorate as desired. Here I used royal icing, but buttercream can be used as well as fruit, nuts and chocolate.





Tutorial and Photos by Sif Jensen. 2009 All rights reserved.
This material may not be republished or reproduced in any manner without the expressed permission of the author.

How to Make a Giant Cupcake

This is the Wilton's Giant Cupcake pan. It's really easy to do and wasn't complicated like I thought it would be. I did do a few changes as how much to put in the top part of the pan (3 cups instead of 4 1/2 cups).



This is the cake recipe that I used:




Preheat oven to 325 degrees.


I Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Cake mix (or any flavor)
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 small box Devil's Food instant pudding (or one that will compliment your cake flavor)
pinch of salt

Mix dry ingredients well. In another bowl, mix:
4 jumbo eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 1/3 cup whole milk
1 cup butter, melted

Mix for 30 seconds and then for 2 minutes on medium speed. Put 3 cups batter in top section. 4 cups in bottom section or just to a little over half full

Bake for 45 - 60 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Frost and decorate as desired!!


For this cupcake, I used the chocolate icing recipe that comes on the can of Hershey's Cocoa. It's really yummy! Icing was put on before the top layer was added. Then I used a cream cheese icing and used a 1M tip to swirl it on. The decorations are made of fondant flower cutouts.







Author--Rhonda Christensen. 2009---all rights reserved.

________________________This material may not be republished or reproduced in any manner without the expressed permission of the author.___________________________


***And a handy tip from Mame ***

One thing I tell my students who may have hot hands...and/or also tend to trim their pastry bags too much [where a coupler slips right through] --

Instead of throwing those bags away, place it over another bag that has the coupler fitted right -It acts like a double insulation!

Scratch Baking Tips (and troubleshooting too!)

This beautiful cake was created by Samele Thorner

I know that sometimes it seems like it is WAY to hard to bake from scratch, or just easier to use a mix, but really, it's not!

I been baking for 20 years (I like saying it that way, makes me feel "experienced"!) and although things sometimes still go awry. I think I am pretty good at it.. sooooooo here are a few tips and troubleshooting items.

~ use an oven thermometer- this is true no matter if you are baking from scratch or a mix. Ovens can be "off" so you want to make sure that you are baking at the proper temperature.

~ FOLLOW THE RECIPE- baking is alchemy, it is not like cooking where you can just substitute things all willy nilly in the recipe! (I tell my friend that all the time) If you want to try a recipe, try it the way it is written the first time. Once you get an understanding of what the writer intended then you can tweak it to your liking. Joyofbaking.com is a good reference for ingredients in baking and their purpose. Baking soda and baking powder are two different animals, you can't just sub one for the other.

~when making a "butter" cake (as in not a sponge or foam cake) there are multiple mixing methods you can use, the most common being the creaming method. I use room temp butter and eggs, but if you don't you will need to cream your butter and sugar for a longer amount of time. The butter/sugar mixture should be light in color and increased in volume. I also add my eggs on medium (4 on my 4.5 quart kitchenaid and 2 or 4 on my 5 quart kitchenaid). count for about 20 seconds between adding each egg so that it is fully incorporated. (the eggs, not being fully incorporated could result in a tough cake)

~when adding the dry ingredients, add them in at LOW speed on the mixer, you could even mix by hand, but I am usually making too much cake for that! you don't want to overmix which could result in a tough cake which brings me to troubleshooting


***My cake has pulled WAY away from the pan and kinda dips in the side****
this is usually caused by too much liquid. The recipe could be incorrect or your measurements could be off.

***My cake has big holes (or tunnels) in it***
This is usually the result of overmixing, which affects the cakes structure

*** My cake is 'gummy' or has a dark line in the middle***
the cake has "fallen" which means that the structure was not strong enough. this could be caused by many things such as overmixing/undermixing, oven too high, which caused the cake to rise but not be completely baked

the best advice I can give when baking from scratch is to pay close attention to the recipe and don't leave the kitchen to do other things.. (ASK ME HOW I KNOW)

Baking Tips by Samele Thorner

All rights reserved 2008
This material may not be republished or reproduced in any manner without the expressed permission of the author.