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 wired gumpaste swan

You need the following: Two appropriately sized cutters. These ones are amaryllis cutters from Tinkertech Two. Any lily-like cutter will work for this. A chestnut veiner - or similar. White florist tape and florist wire, gauge 20 and gauge 24. As you can see, I only had green. I think I might have to go shopping for cake toys again soon. What a burden (or not). You also need gumpaste, but you probably already figured that one out. And gum glue and a fine pair of scissors.

Start with the neck. Roll a sausage and shape a beak at the end. Dip a piece of gauge 20 wire in gum glue and wire the neck. Curve it and leave it to dry for 24 hours.

For the wings, roll out gumpaste on a grooved board and cut out 4 large shapes. If you use curved cutters, like here, make sure you have two facing each way. Dip pieces of gauge 24 wire in gum glue and put all the feathers on wire. Then vein them. Make sure you vein them so the dents are on the front and the wire on the back.

Now take your pair of fine scissors and cut the edges so it will look like feathers. With a ball tool, work the outer edges so they curve and look more like feathers. I forgot to take a photo of that, sorry.

For the tail, make 3 smaller feathers the same way as you made the larger ones. Leave all 7 feathers to dry overnight. Curve them over something. An empty Pringles can is the perfect size for the larger feathers (and a great excuse to eat Pringles) and for the tail feathers, an empty roll for kitchen towels work just fine. Or a 4.5 oz Americolor bottle. Leave to dry for 24 hours. Remember, drying times may vary from place to place. Humidity is very low in Denmark right now, so I only had to let them dry for 6 hours, but I know some of my friends from southern parts of USA might need much longer drying time, especially in the summer.

When everything is nice and dry, it's time to assemble. It's quite simple, almost like assembling a lily. With the neck as a center, attach the feathers in pairs, two large feathers on each side.

The tail feathers are taped together as one, then bent at an angle and taped to the neck. I managed to break a feather in the process - always make extra!

Here's a top view of the assembled swan, complete with two and a half tail feathers. These swans are best stored like here, with the wire stuck in a small jar with dried beans. This way they won't break or tilt.

If you wish, you can paint the beaks and make eyes with an edible marker. They make for a great wedding cake topper. I cut drinking straws to appropriate length, and stick them in the cake. Then I stick the wire in the straw, so it wont come in contact with the cake.

You can make the swan any color you like. Have fun!




Sif Jenson -2008
all rights reserved

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