Naked cake with meringue and berries

Naked cake with meringue, sponge cake layered with meringue, cream, custard and berries. Creamy, sweet, berry tart, moist and a bit of crunch, all the elements i like in a dessert.

Naked cakes have become very popular to make, they are rustic and yet delicate to look at. I entered a cream cake competition with this cake. I wanted to make  merveilleux cake, but one of the criteria said that it had to have a cake base made of some kind of grain. Merveileux was then out of the question, I decided to layer sponge cake and meringue with cream, custard and berries.

I used
1 sponge cake, recipe further down this post
2 Meringue discs, recipe further down this post
6 dl cream, 1 dl mixed with the custard
250 g vanilla custard, (I have used the ready-made from the store)
Blueberry jam
Raspberry Jam
Fresh strawberries
Fresh raspberries
Fresh blueberries
Chocolate
Meringue kisses
Mint leaves decorations
Edible silver

Sponge cake

6  room tempertaured eggs
180 g sugar
180 g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat the oven to 160 ° C.

Beat the eggs until very fluffy and pale yellow (about 6-8 minutes on-medium/high speed). To test that it has been beaten enough, let some of the mixture drip into the bowl and write “Good” if you can see the whole word before it disappears it is ready.

sift flour and baking baking powder in to the egg mixture

Gently fold the flour into the eggs with a spatula

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Smooth the top with a spatula to even out the surface.

Pour the pipe into the mold and sprinkle easily back and forth with the licking pot so that the surface becomes even.

Bake the cake at the bottom of the oven for about 40 minutes until the sponge cake has risen and nicely golden. When you inset a toothpick into the center it should come out clean and dry.

Leave the cake in the pan for a few minutes before you remove it. Place it on a rack to cool and cover it with a clean tea towel.

 Meringue

Preheat oven to 150 C

4 large egg whites
200 g sugar

Combine egg whites and sugar in the heatproof bowl place it over a pan of simmering water. Whisk constantly by hand until mixture is warm to the touch and sugar has dissolved, the mixture should feel completely smooth when rubbed between your fingertips.

Take the bowl off the heat and whisk with a handmixer. Starting on low and gradually increasing to medium-high speed, whisk until stiff peaks form. Continue mixing until the mixture is fluffy and glossy.

Fill a piping bag with the meringue and pipe two discs on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Use two trays if you can’t fit two discs on one. The discs should be a little smaller in diameter than the sponge cake. Pipe little kisses or drops with the remaining meringue to make decoration.

Place the tray in the middle of the oven and reduce the heat to 100 C. The disc is ready when you can pick them up easily about 2 hours. The smaller kisses takes 40-50 minutes.

 Whip the cream

Mix about 1 dl of the cream with the custard

Build your cake las in the picture above.

Spread blueberry jam on the bottom layer then cover it with cream.

Place the meringue disc on top of the cream, then add the custard and top with berries.

Spread raspberry jam on the bottom of the middle layer and place it over the berries jam side facing down.

Repeat the steps and spread raspberry jam on the bottom of the lat layer.

Cover the cake with cream and decorate it.

Lemon cupcakes with lemon and rapsberry frosting

 Happy Birthday Norway!!!

Today the 17th of May is Norway’s constitution day. This day is among others the children’s day and celebrated with school children parading, every school has a marching band at the front and the students follow grouped by grade.  All the grade schools in every city and town parade, in Oslo they have the largest parade, the student parade up the main street and pass the royal palace, where the king and queen wave to the children.

MiniMe’s class arranged her schools 17th of may celebration at school and I am in the group that set up tables and chairs and cleaned up after the party. I got an e-mail asking us to bake cakes too, as if we did not have enough to do. The easy way out would have been to bake a sheet cake and be done with it. I had to ask if there was anything they specially needed and got a reply that nobody was making cupcakes, so I made cupcakes.

Today recipe is lemon cupcakes with light and airy raspberry and lemon butter cream, sweet and sour just the way I like it.

Light and airy butter cream you ask, Yes, I mixed Swiss meringue with butter.
Swiss meringue is egg and sugar whipped in a double boiler. This makes a silky smooth buttercream, that spreads beautifully and perfect for piping.

 Makes about 24 regular sized cupcakes

Decorations:
Fresh blueberries
Chocolate
Edible silver

250 g of room temperatured butter
250 g sugar
Grated lemon peel from one lemon
Juice from 1 lemon
4 large eggs
250 g flour
3 teaspoons baking soda

Preheat the oven to 190 C

Beat butter and sugar white.

Add lemon peel and juice, keep beating, then add the eggs one by one.

Mix flour and baking soda into a bowl and sift it into the butter mixture and beat on medium speed.

Mix until you see all the flour is well corporated, a few minute only. If you beat for too long, the texture of the cake can be very rubbery and spongy

Old picture from an old post, I forgot to take pictures during the process

Place cupcake liners in a cupcake tray and scoop the batter into cupcake liners.

Bake them in the middle of the oven for about 15 minutes.

Let the cupcakes cool down before frosting them.

Swiss meringue butter cream

4 large egg whites
200 g sugar
250 g room teperatured butter, cut into tablespoons sized cubs
Juice from one lemon
juice from 250 g frozen raspberries or fresh

Combine egg whites and sugar in the heatproof bowl place it over a pan of simmering water. Whisk constantly by hand until mixture is warm to the touch and sugar has dissolved, the mixture should feel completely smooth when rubbed between your fingertips.

Take the bowl off the heat and whisk with a handmixer. Starting on low and gradually increasing to medium-high speed, whisk until stiff peaks form. Continue mixing until the mixture is fluffy and glossy, and completely cool, about 10 minutes.

Keep the mixer on medium-low speed, add the butter a few tablespoons at a time, mixing well after each addition. Once all butter has been added, remember to scrape down sides of bowl with a flexible spatula, and continue beating until the frosting is completely smooth. Keep buttercream at room temperature if using the same day. This buttercream can be stored inan airtight container and refrigerated up to 3 days or in the freezer up to 1 month. Before using, bring to room temperature and beat with paddle attachment on low-speed until smooth again, about 5 minutes.

Divide the buttercream into to bowls and add the flavouring mix well. The butter cream is ready for piping,

Pipe and decorate your cupcakes.

Three ingredient baked cheese cake

 Delicious, airy and soft cheesecake made with only three ingredients, topped with blueberry topping, fresh blueberries and blackberries.

I heard someone opens and closes the fridge and freezer and then I heard “Mom, isn’t it about time to make some blueberry pie?” “What do you mean?” I replied. “You have a lot of blueberries in the freezer, what about using some”. Ha ha ha, I think someone who wants pie.I was planning to make Japanese cheesecake, but thought a simpler version would be quicker. For this cheese cake you only need white chocolate, cream cheese and eggs. This recipe is found everywhere online and super easy to make.

 Cheesecake with blueberries

250 g white chocolate
6 eggs
250 g cream cheese

Blueberry topping – See the recipe further down in this post.
Fresh blueberries
Fresh blackberries
Mint
Powdered sugarPreheat the oven to 200 ºC.

Line the base of a 7″ round cake pan(fixed base) with parchment paper and grease the sides with butter, If you do not have one with a fixed base, wrap som aluminium foil on the outside to make sure it is water tight, set aside.

Separate the eggs and beat egg whites with an electric mixer until the egg whites reaches the stiff peak stage

Fill a saucepan with water to about half full. Bring the water to a full boil. Turn off the heat. Place white chocolate chips in a large mixing bowl and set it over the saucepan, make sure the bowl is bigger than the sauce pan and that the bowl does not touch the water.  When the chocolate has melted
Add cream cheese and mix till smooth.

Add the egg yolks, mix to combine.

Add the beaten egg whites into the cream cheese mixture in 3 separate additions, each time fold with a spatula (I used a balloon whisk) until just blended.

Pour batter into the prepared pan. Tap the pan lightly on a table top to get rid of any trapped air bubbles in the batter.

Place cake pan on a baking tray. Fill the baking tray with some hot water.

Place on lower rack in the pre heated oven and bake for 15 mins. Lower the temperature to 150 C and bake for another 15 minutes. Turn off the oven temperature and leave the cake inside the oven for another 15 minutes.

Remove cake pan from the oven and leave the cake to cool before unmolding. Refrigerate for about 2 to 3 hours.

 

Blueberries topping:
5 dl frozen berries (you can use fresh berries, but it was the frozen ones I had in abundance)
3 dl water
1-1.5 dl sugar (start with a little bit of sugar and adjust afterwards to your liking. It is easier to adjust up than down)
2 teaspoons  corn starch

Combine all ingredients except the corn starch in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a simmer, and cook until berries break down, about 4 minutes and adjust the sweetness.

Let cool, then refrigerate, covered, until cold (or up to 3 days).

Pour on cooled blueberry on the cheesecake and decorate with fresh berries and mint leaves, dust with powdered sugar if you want.

Decadent calori rich yummy chocolate and caramel drip cake with buttercream

My boyfriends birthday is coming up Analiza. Can you teach me to make a cake? Of course I can. What kind of cake do you want? I do not know, but he wants caramel flavour. There are so many styles of cake to choose from. She wanted a cake that she could make later   without my help, so we went for a naked drip cake.

This cake is rich and heavy and I mean literally heavy, look at the ingredients and you will see that it weighs a few kilos.

What do I need for the cake? I thought about it and decided that she needed for three 23 cm/9 inch diameter cake tins was:

12 room temperatured eggs
450 g sugar
450 g flour
1,5 tsp baking powder
melted butter for brushing your cake tin
some flour for dusting your cake tin

Bailys, milk or orange juice to moisten the cake

Grease 3 x deep, 23cm round cake tins and line bases with baking paper.

Sift flours and baking powder together three times to aerate.

Preheat oven to 180C.

Make this in one batch if you have a big enough mixing bowl or make three batches.

Use an electric mixer and beat eggs and sugar in a large bowl on medium-high speed until mixture is thick, pale and tripled in volume.

Gradually sift flour mixture over egg mixture while simultaneously folding in with a large metal spoon until just combined.

Divide mixture between prepared tins. To level batter, gently spin tins on kitchen counter. Bake for 20 minutes or until cakes have shrunk away from the sides slightly and when pricked with a pick it comes out dry.

Turn out on to baking paper-lined wire racks. Carefully peel away baking paper, then leave to cool.

When cooled cut each cake in two

Chocolate frosting:
1 can condensed milk
200 g butter
300 g dark chocolate
1 egg

In a saucepan over medium heat, melt butter and chocolate and stir in condensed milk. Beat well while heating up the mixture on medium heat. Pull the sauce pan of the heat and let it cool for a bit.

Beat the egg and add to the warm mixture , whisk until the egg is incorporated and re heat the mixture until it gets thick and glossy

Chocolate caramel filling
1 can condensed milk
200 g butter
200 g milk chocolate

In a saucepan over medium heat, melt butter and chocolate and stir in condensed milk. Beat well while heating up the mixture on medium heat. Heat the mixture on medium to high heat and keep stirring until the mixture becomes thick.

Butter cream
500 g room temperatured butter
500 g icing sugar
1,5 tsp vanilla extract
0,5 dl chocolate caramel filling

Beat the butter in a large bowl until soft. Add half of the icing sugar and beat until smooth.

 

Add the remaining icing sugar, vanilla extract and the chocolate caramel filling, beat the mixture until creamy and smooth.

Decoration
Chocolate covered popping candy
M&Ms
Twix
Stroopwafel
Edible luster
Dark chocolate

Moisten each cake halves with 2-3 tbsp Baileys, milk or juice.

Spread chocolate caramel filling on each halves except the top one, spread the buttercream evenly on each of the cake halves. Stack the cakes on top of each other and coat the cake evenly with the top layer of butter cream. Since this is a naked cake you want a thin layer of buttercream around the cake. Put the cake in the fridge for about 15 minutes before you put the last layer of frosting/chocolate glaze.

Spread the chocolate topping on the chilled cake and let it run down the top edge.

Decorate the cake with decoration you want.

Lemon and white chocolate chip cookies

I am in the coloful mode and wanted some cheerful cookies, to me colors always bring happy thought.

I had some dried apricots, dried cranberries and white chocolate in the cupboard and thought that this would be a nice combination in a lemon flavored cookies.

Paper bag DIY HERE

250 g softened butter
2,5 dl sugar
1 large egg
3 tablespoon lemon juice
4 dl cups flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
200 chopped white chocolate
1,5 dl chopped dried apricots
1,5 dl dried cranberries
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel

Preheat oven to 150 C 

Cream together the butter and white sugar until smooth.

Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the lemon juice. Sift flour and baking soda into the butter mixture and mix then stir in chopped chocolate, apricots, cranberries and lemon peel.

Place a spoon full of cookie dough on a baking paper lined baking tray.

Bake for about 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are slightly browned.

Let the cookies cool on a rack before eating them:)

 

 

Lemon blondie with marzipan and dark chocolate

Chewie soft lemony blondie with marzipan.

I had some marzipan that I thought would be nice to use with this cake. Lemon and marzipan goes quite well together, I was not used to this combination, but a vacation to Malta 15 years ago I tasted this combination for the first time, bakeries had a lot of marzipan treats and most of them lemon flavoured. I might have tasted this combination earlier, but do not have as vivid memory as the one from oour vacation to Malta.

You need:

100 g butter
100 g white chocolate
1 can sweet condensed milk
3 eggs
5 tbsp fresh lemon juice
grated peel from 1 lemon
150 g chopped marzipan
100 g dark chocolate

Preheat oven to 150 C

Melt the butter and chocolate on low heat in a sauce pan and add the condensed milk. Set the pan aside and let it cool a bit

Whisk the eggs, add the butter mix and lemon juice and peel stir to a smooth mixture.

Lastly add the flour and stir untill a smooth batter, but do not over mix.

Pour the batter in a baking paper lined pan about 25 x 25 cm. Sprinkle the marzipan bits on top.Bake the cake in the lover third of the oven for about 25-30 minutes.

Let the blondie cool before you decorate it with chocolate.

Orange cup cake

Yummy orange cup cakes in homemade cupcake liners, see DIY HERE

24 regular or12 large cupcakes

250 g butter
2,5 dl sugar
4 eggs
Grated zest of 1 orange pieces
3/4 cup orange juice or squeezed orange juice
1 teaspoons baking powder
5 dl flour

1 extra orange to squeeze on top of the cup cakes.

Icing:
Icing sugar
Fresh orange juice
Orange zest for garnish
Grated dark chocolate for garish

Preheat oven to 175° C
Cream butter and sugar until it is fluffy, white and creamy.

Add the eggs one by one, mix wellin  between each egg. Add the orange zest and juice.

Sift baking powder and flour into the butter and egg mixture. Mix everything together.

Scoop the batter into your cup cake liners. If you use the liners from the DIY, use two scoops, if you use regular liners use one scoop.

Place your tray in the middle of the oven and bake for about 15 minutes. Check if the cup cakes are done by inserting a wooden skewer in one of them, if it comes out clean the cup cakes are done.

Squeezed some orange juice over the cup cake and put them on a rack to cool.

When they are cool top them with a bit of glase made with powdered sugar and a bit of orange juice. Garnish with grated orange peel and grated dark chocolate.

 

 

My god sons babtismal cake that MiniMe made and I only helped out a bit.

My cousins asked if I could bake a cake for her sons baptism and of course I am going to bake a cake for my god son, but did I.

MiniMe has been planning this cake for weeks. A few weeks ago when she came home from school she asked me about the cake.

MiniMe: Mum, you haven’t forgotten about the cake have you?
Me: What cake?
MiniMe: You know, for the baby’s babtism.
Me: No, I still have a few weeks to make it.
MiniME: Oh good, I have a few ideas for the decoration and it has to be blue”

We, she my little pride and joy made the cakes and most of the decoration.

She also made little booties, a rattle and letters. You never know what little children can do given a little instructions. Yes, mummy is brimming with pride.

This cake project ended up with MiniMe doing most of the work. My lucky task was to color the marzipan in different shades of blue and help her out if she was stuck, by giving her instructions.

I also got to put the cake in and take it out of the oven. Oh yes, I had to measure out the flour for her and assembled the cake.

 

MiniMe made 2 chocolate and 2 sponge cake

Each sponge cake layer consisted of 

6 eggs
2 dl sugar
3 dl flour
1 tsp baking powder

The chocolate sponge consisted of

6 eggs
2 dl sugar
2 dl flour
1 dl cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder

Whisk egg and sugar white and sift in the rest of the ingredients. Fold the dry ingredients in the eggs carefully and pour it into a roasting pan about 26 cm X 36 cm. Bake in a pre heated oven for 10 minutes on 180 C.

After baking I trimmed the cake to the size of an A4 sized paper.

For filling and dirty icing I used

2,4 liter of cream that I whipped to cream with

2 tbsp powdered sugar infused with vanilla

 

600 g naturally sweetened raspberry jam.

250 g fresh raspberries

For cake decoration she used 1 kg marzipan and colored with Wilton Royal blue icing color.

To cover the cake I used 2 kg marzipan that i rolled out about 3-4 mm thickness. You need quite a bit more than what you need in order to get a nice cover on your cake. I usually make the marzipan cover a total of 20 cm wider and longer than I need, 10 cm on each side.

A traditional celebratory cake in Norway is a sponge cake with with berries and cream covered with either marzipan or cream, “marsipankake” or a “bløtkake”, for a child’s party a chocolate cake is common to make. we made a combination of both

The teddy above she made all by herself and without any instructions from me.

I made the little blocks with letters and numbers, the baby’s initials, and the date.

 

 

MiniMes carrot cup cake, mummys pride and joy is baking :)

Can I make something from this book? MiniMe asked. This book is given to every first graders in Norway, a cook book with healthy recipes for the parents and the child.

Today we are making something that sounds healthy but it really is not. Actually MiniMe is baking carrot cup cakes with a little assistance from me, all I had to do was to take pictures and answer if she had any questions.

We did a few other things too, but that will be shown in a different post.

 

This is really a carrot cake recipe and got 20 normal sized cup cakes and modified it a bit.

4 egg

2,5 dl sugar(the recipe said 3 dl)

3 dl sifted flour

1 tbsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1 tps vanilla extract

2 tps baking powder

5 tbsp neutral oil

5 dl shredded carrot

1 grated lemon peel.

(I would add 2 dl of chopped walnuts, but MiniMe does not like walnuts in her cake9

 

Frosting

250 g cream cheese

150 g room-temperature butter

300 g powdered sugar

1 tps vanilla extract or a bit of lemon juice

Set the oven to 180 C.

 

Peel and grate carrots.

Beat eggs and sugar fluffy and almost white, add vanilla extract and fold in sifted flour, cinnamon, salt and baking powder, then fold in the carrots and grated lemon peel..

Scoop the mixture into cup cake baking cups and bake the cup cakes in the middle of the oven for about 20 minutes.

Let the cupcakes cool on a wire rack before frosting them.

Make the frosting by beating butter, cream cheese and powdered sugar into a smooth mixture, then add vanilla extract or a bit of lemon juice.

Decorate the cup cakes

She tried to make magnolia bakery swirls with the topping for the first time, not to bad if you ask me:) and she decorated with self made marzipan carrots. Yes, mummy is proud of her 8 year old.

 

 

Lemon lime poppy seed cake

We love the tartnes and flavour of sitrus, specially lime and lemon, so this cake is a favorite of ours.

I made 12 cup cakes and one pund cake out of this recipe

Preheat oven to 180 C

250 g sugar
250 g butter
4 eggs
300 g flour
3 tablespoons poppy seeds
2 teaspoons baking powder
Zest and juice of 1 lemon and 2 limes

Beat butter and sugar white with the sitrus zest, then add the eggs on by one untill all well incorporated in the butter and sugar mixture,

Sift the flour with the baking powder and mix this in to the butter mixture on low speed adding the poppy seeds and the sitrus juice at the same time, as soon as everything  mixt together stop mixing, you do not want to over mix the batter.

Divide the mixture between cup cake 12 cup cake cups and a rectangular cake tin lined with baking paper.

The cup cakes I baked for about 15 minutes

The pound cake I baked for about 40 minutes

The glaze is just a mixture of lemon and lime juice and powdered sugar, poured on top when the cake has cooled and sprinkle somelime zest on top.

Enjoy the cake with a nice cup of coffee.