Birthday Cake!!

     I've been thinking about making a mousse cake for a while now, and so finally I had the chance since my birthday is this week.  The cake was a wonderful gold cake that was incredibly good.  Basically like a sugar cookie but in cake form.

  The mousse was good, but it was too gelatenous, so I'll find a new recipe for the second time I make this.

  I baked the cakes, 3 layers, though only two survived.  Then I made the pate a choux and put those away to rest until the next day when we would put them on the cake.  The mousse was fun to make, though the gelatin was being obstinante.

Assembly:

   I put some wax paper on the bottom of a springform pan, running it outside of the pan before I locked it.  Then I put down the first layer of cake and then layered some cubed strawberries on top, then put the mousse on top, and then more diced strawberries.  The last layer of cake went on and I put cling wrap and then alluminum foil on top.  It needed to go in the fridge for at least three hours for the mousse, but we ended up putting in overnight because we weren't going to have the cake until the next day.

Strawberry Mousse

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 tablespoons powdered gelatin or 5 sheets gelatin
• 1/2 pound fresh strawberries, stems removed, plus extra, for garnish
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 2/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream

Directions

If using sheet gelatin, soak the sheets in cold water for 15 minutes.

Puree the strawberries in a food processor. Drain through a fine strainer to eliminate the seeds. Heat the lemon juice and dissolve the powdered gelatin into it. Or, if using sheet gelatin, drain and dissolve the softened sheets into the warm lemon juice.

Blend the lemon juice into the pureed strawberries, add the powdered sugar, and mix thoroughly. Cool the mixture completely until it thickens.

Whip the cream and gently fold into the strawberry mixture. Pour into a lightly buttered mold and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

Remove from mold, and garnish with cleaned and sweetened sliced strawberries.

Gold Cake

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter flavored vegetable shortening, 140 grams
• 1 1/4 cup sugar, 300 grams
• 2 1/2 cups cake flour, sifted, 300 grams
• 3 teaspoons baking powder, 14 grams
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 8 egg yolks, beaten, 130 grams
• 3/4 cup milk, 180 grams
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 (9-inch) cake pans with shortening and set aside.

Cream together the shortening and the sugar. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Slowly alternate adding the egg yolks and milk with the dry ingredients and mix until well combined. Add the vanilla and mix well.

Pour into the prepared pans, about 550 grams of batter for each cake. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on a rack.

Pate a Choux 

 -  the recipe is in my blog archive.

Agave Frosting

-  coming soon.

Fanciful Pate a Choux

Daring Bakers Challenge August - Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pate a choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild!

I've done Pate a Choux before, and it was good but it didn't work out perfectly.  This time I made a few different creations:  Swans, Cream Puffs, and Paris-Brest Cake.  A little history about the cake:

The pastry was created in 1891 to commemorate the Paris–Brest–Paris bicycle race. Its circular shape is representative of a wheel. It became popular with riders on the Paris-Brest cycle race, partly because of its energy-giving high calorific value, and is now found in pâtisseries all over France.

 The swans were fun, but the heads did not work out very well.  I guess I didn't pipe them out thick enough and proportional because they cooked unevenly.  Some people said they looked like scorpions which was unfortunate.

The Paris-Brest cake was really fun.  I watched a You-Tube video about it, although the man who baked it; his puffed up a lot more, but mine still tasted good and was big enough to put the vanilla creme and whip cream in.  

I cut off the top of the cake, then pressed down some of the insides so that I could fit the vanilla creme inside the trenches then piped the whipped heavy cream on top of that and put the 'lid' back on.   Before I put the 'lid' back on I cut them into about 1 inch pieces so that when you put it back on and want to cut the pieces, you wont press on the whip cream and have it come out the sides.  So you cut it up into about 12 pieces and put the pieces back on top and when you go to cut it it still looks beautiful.  

   With the cream puffs I finally got the insertion of the whipping cream right.  The last time I made cream puffs they were pretty big and so when I tried to pipe the cream in the side it only filled up a little because of the air pockets.  This time I made smaller ones and used chopsticks to poke a hole in the bottom then kind of made room in the cream puff for the cream, then piped it in.  So it filled up all the way and wasn't only in a small air pocket.

Pate a choux

(cannot be doubled)

Ingredients

1⁄2 cup (120 ml) (115 gm) (4 oz) butter 

1 cup (240 ml) water 

1⁄4 teaspoon (11⁄2 gm) salt 

1 cup (240 ml) (140 gm) (5 oz) all-purpose flour 

4 large eggs

Directions:

1. Line at least two baking sheets with silicone mats or parchment paper, or grease pans well. 

2. Preheat oven to moderately hot 375°F/190°C/gas mark 5 . 

3. In a small saucepot, combine butter, water, and salt. Heat over until butter melts, then remove from stove. 

4. Add flour all at once and beat, beat, beat the mixture until the dough pulls away from the sides of the pot. 

5. Add one egg, and beat until well combined. Add remaining eggs individually, beating vigorously after each addition. Resulting mixture should be somewhat glossy, very smooth, and somewhat thick. 

6. Using a 1⁄4” (6 mm) tip on a pastry bag, pipe out about 36 swan heads. You’re aiming for something between a numeral 2 and a question mark, with a little beak if you’re skilled and/or lucky. 

7. Remove the tip from the bag and pipe out 36 swan bodies. These will be about 1.5” (40 mm) long, and about 1” (25 mm) wide. One end should be a bit narrower than the other. 

8. Bake the heads and bodies until golden and puffy.  This is usually around 20-25 minutes, it all depends on how big you make the pastries. The heads will be done a few minutes before the bodies, so keep a close eye on the baking process. 

9. Remove the pastries to a cooling rack, and let cool completely before filling.

  Video for the Paris-Brest cake:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeRQA6cNLR0

•  Though I would also follow his Pate a Choux recipe because this recipe didn't puff up like his did.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOb_d-2o5Vw&feature=relmfu