Happy Birthday America Cake!

 

I baked you a cake!!!

My apologies for the tardiness of this post - I do have a jolly good reason and I did in all fairness to myself actually bake and eat this cake on July 4th, which in and of itself was a feat due to amazing humidity and general stickiness here in Maine - not your usual kind of weather in our usually coolish-even-in-summer fair state. Due to said stickiness my computer decided to do a lot of jumping and jiggling about when I attempted to use either the keyboard or stylus rendering me incapable of actually writing a post - when I wrote a snippet on Facebook the cursor would jump to the middle of a sentence when I was halfway through and I kept on writing not realizing this had happened thus making my comments a bunch of even worse than usual gobbledeegook - it was a very frustrating occurrence which did not rectify itself until the humidity dropped and the air cleared and hooray here I am now all cool and dry and able to write at will - yea!!!

I found this divine recipe via Pinterest Strawberry Banana Milkshake Cake at the Hungry Rabbit and decided I wanted to make the strawberry part as the jumping off point for my Independence Day cake - I knew I wanted a pink cake with strawberries and blueberries and white icing - I was going to cover the cake with just whipped cream for the British part of this honouring of the birthday of this great nation cake but it was too humid for whipped cream, I think it would have curdled and soured as I was taking the photos so I made a marshmallow icing/frosting which I was also leery about with the atmospheric conditions but hey it turned out really well and was very easy to boot!

Let's get started shall we!

This recipe is for a 6" cake made in one layer - double for a 9" cake with two separate layers.

Do keep some blueberries and strawberries reserved for decoration.

First I made a very simple blueberry jam - I just put half a punnet of blueberries (sadly the Maine wild blueberries weren't ready yet so I used New Jersey high bush blueberries which are larger) and about 3 heaped tablespoons of sugar together in a pan and gently heated them until the berries popped and the juice thickened a bit - then I left that to cool. You can sweeten more to taste as you chose.

Next was the strawberry part:

12ozs fresh strawberries

2oz/1/4 cup sugar

1. Put these 2 ingredients in a pan and heat until the strawberries are soft and the juices are flowing.

2. Put into a strainer and press to extract all the juices.

3. Put juice back into the pan and reheat and cook down until you get 1fluid ounce/ 1/8 cup of strawberry syrup.

4. Put solids in a blender and blend until smooth, set aside.

THE CAKE: Have all your ingredients at room temperature.

3 fluid ounces/3/8cup whole milk

3 large egg whites 

 1-2 drops red food colour

4 1/2ozs/ 1 1/8 cups white flour

1 3/4 ozs/ 3/8 cup malt milk powder - I forgot to get this so I used some toasted buckwheat groats ground up in the coffee grinder

  5ozs/ 3/4 cup granulated sugar

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

6 tablespoons soft, salted butter, cut into pieces - I always use Kate's.

Now here's an interesting way to make a cake I have not seen before - but it worked - thanks Hungry Rabbit

Prepare your 6" cake pan y buttering, lining with parchment and buttering and flouring ready for the batter.Have your oven at 350F

1. In a medium sized bowl whisk the strawberry syrup, milk and egg whites together until well blended.

2. In a separate bowl whisk all the dry ingredients together and then add bit by bit the soft butter - I don't have a mixer so I used two knives to 'cut' the butter into the dry mix - see this video for how to do that - keep on doing this until all the butter is cut in and the mix is pretty evenly sized.

3. Add half of the strawberry mix and blend until smooth.

4. Add rest of strawberry mix and again blend until smooth.

5. Add the red food colour if you want to make the cake a bit pinker - I added 2 drops and maybe should have added three for a bit more pink but then I also don't like the taste of red food colouring so actually I was happy with less pink and no red flavour. 

6. Pour batter into pan....

and bake for about 45 - 50 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. (If you do double the recipe and do it in two pans the time should be about 20-22 minutes)

7. Remove from the oven, allow to cool about 10 minutes and then take cake out of pan and put on a cooling rack until completely cold.

8. Whilst cake is cooling whip 1 cup of cream with sugar to taste and keep in the fridge until you are ready to use.

9. When the cake is completely cold cut in half horizontally.

10. Slather one half with blueberry 'jam'

11. Slather other half with strawberry 'jam':

12. Slather blueberry side with the whipped cream:

 13. Place one half on top of the other and put in the fridge whilst you make the easy peasy marshmallow frosting/icing.

Off to the fridge with you!!

MARSHMALLOW FROSTING:

I thought this was going to be really hard and also thought it may not work in the heavy humidity we were experiencing in Maine but I, happily, was wrong on both counts!! 

2 egg whites at room temperature (very important or the icing may not work half so well) 

6 ounces/ 3/4 cup sugar  - the recipe I used from an ancient British magazine said twice this amount of sugar which just seemed ridiculous so I went with the 6 ozs and it worked fine.

Large pinch of cream of tartar

2 tablespoons hot water.

1. Put all 4 ingredients in a large bowl set over a pan of lightly simmering water - don't let the bottom of the bowl touch the water or the eggs will cook.

2. Whisk like crazy until the mixture forms soft peaks, and at this point it should be quite hot to the touch making your eggs safe if you are using commercial eggs.

3. Take the bowl off the heat and keep whisking until cool and about this thick:

 Isn't that beautiful?

Now take your cake out of the fridge and slather frosting on the little darling - I found the best way to do this was to pile it on the top of the cake and push it over the edge thus:

Now adorn as you see fit with your reserved blueberries and strawberries - I created a star with my strawberries and was very pleased with my self when I had finished :) 

This picture doesn't show it but the cake did come out a very pale pink

...and despite me using the buckwheat groats instead of the malted milk powder the taste was really nice - the buckwheat does give a nice toasted accent akin to a strong cereal flavour and the cake wasn't too sweet which was also good as the frosting certainly was. The frosting set very nicely and was a nice addition to this cake.

Here is my cake in front of the flag we hung for July 4th - isn't it the perfect flag for an Anglo/American couple - it is the Grand Union - the first official flag of the United States and the flag of George Washington, for whom, apparently, this cake should be made with cherries instead of strawberries - which I think would be just fine!!

I do hope everyone had a wonderful July 4th holiday and you'll consider making this cake all summer long.

The two designs I used in the background of some of these pictures are available ay my Spoonflower SHOP as fabric, wallpaper, decals and wrapping paper:
 
Americana Folkloric - HERE

Jacobean Strawberries HERE 

HAPPY BAKING - if you do make this cake please consider posting your pictures on my Facebook page HERE - I'd be honoured.

Happy July 4th 2012!

Hooray for the RED, WHITE and BLUE - sorry I couldn't do the white in white or you wouldn't have seen it!!

We are having lovely mild weather in Maine - cool, a bit breezy and overcast - really quite delightful. Here's hoping everyone has a fun and delicious day - what will you be eating, making or baking for your July 4th pudding??

Silly Simple Strawberry Tarts for July 4th

Oh my goodness - these tarts are SO VERY GOOD and so ridiculously easy - to be honest one could happily forget the tart part and just eat the white chocolate cream filling with strawberries. If you go ahead and make this recipe you will think I am the bees knees for finding it in the June issue of British Country Living - the best magazine IN THE WORLD!!!

YOU DO NEED TO START THIS RECIPE THE DAY BEFORE YOU WANT TO EAT IT - because the cream needs that much time to set up and achieve it's delightfully luxurious and divine consistency - you can bake the tarts cases the day before too and keep them in an air tight container overnight!!

For the tart crust - I made baby tarts as you can see - if you want to make one tart this recipe is for a deep 8"/20cm radius tart pan - other wise this makes about 10 mini tarts - of course that depends on the size of your minis! I made mine with Pate Brisee from Martha but I made it too thick and I think the following recipe would be so much better as it is easier to make thinner and also doesn't shrink - which is important if you're using the mini cases!! It is from my friend Lindsey at Let Them Eat Cake Bakers in Belfast.

Pre-heat your oven to 325F...thank you!!

EASY PEASY SWEET TART CRUST: I made 10 miniature tarts from the recipe here:

1 1/2 cups/6ozs of unbleached white flour

1/2 cup/2ozs confectioners/icing sugar

1 stick + 1 tablespoon/ 4 1/2ozs butter VERY COLD

1 large egg yolk

a tad of milk or cream if your dough doesn't stick together

1. Sift dry ingredients together into a medium sized bowl.

2. Grate the butter into the dry ingredients and rub in until like breadcrumbs.

3. Add egg yolk and blend carefully until the dough sticks together

4. Mine didn't stick together with just the egg yolk so I added baby drop by baby drop some cream until it did start to come together...be careful once it does start to come together it does so quite quickly...don't let it get sticky!!

5.My mini tart cases are about 1 1/2" round so I rolled a ball of dough about the size of a large walnut and popped one into each case.

 This is too thick - do try to make it thinner than this, you'll thank me for it :)

Allow the tart cases to cool completely then melt some white chocolate - about 2oz - melt in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water and be careful not to get any water in the chocolate or it will seize and that's no fun!!! Then coat the pastry cases with a nice slather of white chocolate.

With their coating of white chocolate

Now for the best part WHITE CHOCOLATE CREAM - so easy!!!

9 oz neufchatel cheese (I used this) OR cream cheese would work as well - the original recipe called for marscapone but I couldn't bring myself to spend nearly $7 on a container of it!! but if you want something really special then use the marscapone!

7oz white chocolate - luckily I can buy Callebaut callets (little dots) at the Belfast Coop for a very good price - use the best you can afford or find.

4 tablespoons heavy/double cream - you need this for the neufchatel or cream cheese but not if you use marscapone.

Also -  6 fluid ounces heavy/double cream - I really like Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream - really thick and delicious and whips so well - so whip it up and set aside.

Here's the hard part - put the cheese, white chocolate and small amount of cream if you are NOT using marscapone - in the top of a double boiler or in a glass bowl set over a pan of simmering water - wait until the chocolate seems completely melted - take off the heat and stir until well blended - allow to cool some and then put in the fridge covered overnight to set up perfectly!!

NOTE: If the chocolate is not completely melted before you stir - and this did happen to me - when you stir it it may get lumpy - not completely smooth - if this happens you need to let it cool quite a bit and then put in a blender and blend until completely smooth.

Day of devourment: A couple of hours before you are ready to assemble your tarts slice up the best strawberries you can avail yourself and macerate in a bowl with a few tablespoons of sugar  and set aside until needed.

Beautiful local strawberries - ahhhhh

Take your faboo white chocolate cream out of the fridge - STOP yourself from eating all of it now - dollop as much of this sublime nectar into either your mini tarts or your full size tart, smooth and cover with as many strawberries and strawberry juice as you feel necessary!!

EAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy July 4th everyone!!!

This post is part of the Tea Time Treats challenge hosted by Lavender and Lovage
in collaboration with What Kate Baked

 http://wp.me/p287Dn-566

My Stars and Stripes submission to Spoonflower

I entered another design contest at Spoonflower this last Tuesday - the project was to "Create a fabric design using stars and stripes as design motifs." I planned on using the design motifs above, (which I posted on Facebook - it helps me commit to entering the competition if I dedicate to do it in a Facebook post!! - a self imposed deadline I suppose :) ) to create an homage to the Star Spangled Banner in honour of that most American of holidays July 4th Independence Day! The repeat size is only 8 x 8 inches so that was somewhat restricting but still it's always fun to have parameters to work with - makes you more creative - sometimes! I did instantly have an Americana/quilt concept rolling around in the old brain and off I went to the drawing board.

I started with motifs I already had painted in watercolour on paper and were previously scanned  into the computer and cleaned up in Photoshop. They were: a red gingham, a blue gingham, a decorative star and a red plaid - it was nice to have everything at hand ready to play with that 8" square. When I first started doing the design I tried a non-symmetrical layout but whatever you do at an 8 inch repeat turns out to look very symmetrical when joined up with its self into an allover repeat. I also played with a traditional Rolling Star motif - but I didn't think they played well with the other motifs:

Then I started to make some stripes out of the ginghams and a star from a red wash I had done for another project:

I ended up with the central motif you see above here - the decorative star surrounded by checked stripes. That became the dominate motif of the finished layout:

Here are four of the above tiles made into the allover pattern: American Folkloric - the design I have entered into this weeks Spoonflower competition

A

Here are three trial repeats with the same allover feel but with a couple of different motifs and a slightly different look - isn't it amazing how distinct each repeat looks?

B

C

D

 What do you think of the different designs?

I've also made the design into a pattern for a melamine plate at my new Zazzle shop - I love the idea of designing for the melamine plates - I have been hoping for a long time that someone would start doing them as print on demand and last week I discovered that Zazzle does them - my only disappointment is I think they are over priced, I do hope they consider bringing the price down in the future - by quite a lot!! Although I can custom design plates for anyone who wants such and then you could have a lovely special plate for a classy picnic or birthday party - just drop me a line if you are interested in that new service from yours truly!!

I'm also excited about the Zazzle shop as they have different products to my CafePress shop - they have iPad 3 skins, MacAir Book sleeves, envelopes and postage stamps, pillows and kitchen cotton items which supprot a company that employs single Mums - and oh so much more - I'll be rolling the new items out in the next few weeks - stay tuned!!

PLEASE VOTE FOR MY AMERICANA FOLKLORIC DESIGN HERE - AND MANY THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR DOING SO! I cannot tell you which page my design will be on as the images are shuffled for each and every voter and you do have to go through all 21 pages to get to place your vote but it goes pretty sharpish - thanks!!!

 I am working on a delicious and really easy recipe for July 4th - it should be up in the next couple of days - 'til then have fun and enjoy the weekend!!