Thursday 21 August 2008

Berry Birthday Cake

This is the cake I made for my Mum's birthday last week.

The sponge is flavoured with lemon zest and is filled and decorated with fresh raspberries. To make it a bit more special I used blended Italian Mascarpone cheese with the cream, Mascarpone is amazingly delicious, very rich and very creamy it's excellent for desserts and also make a good pasta sauce. If you've never tried Mascarpone then you should look out for it, you won't regret it!
This was a good cake, I think I slightly over-baked it but once it was filled it wasn't that noticeable, the lemon zest certainly added more flavour and worked well with the raspberries.

To make a basic sponge my method is to weigh the eggs in their shells (more eggs for a bigger cake, less for a small cake) then use the same weight of:-
-Sugar
-Butter
-Self-raising flour
Cream the sugar and butter together, add the eggs then the flour and bake at around 180, for roughly 30-45 minutes.
Obviously you can be creative, want a coffee cake? add coffee to the mix or cocoa for a chocolate cake etc...

4 comments:

Sylvie said...

Happy Birthday to your mum and what a lovely cake. She's one lucky lady.

Christine said...

The cake looks great. I agree, mascarpone cheese is amazing. I've only used it in tiramisu, but I should make other things with it.

Happy birthday to your mom!

Amanda said...

Oh. My. Word.

Sam, you've got my eyes rolling & mouth watering with this one. Mascarpone frosting? Ooooh, yum yum yum!

Thanks, also, for explaining the process of weighing ingredients for the sponge. I've often wondered how that works. With the recipes by volume here in the US, the British process has always been a bit of a mystery to me.

SilverMoon Dragon said...

What a clever way of making sponge! I love sponge cake but have always been scared off from making them by the long involved method my mother gave me, and I never have cream of tartar in the house. This looks so simple I'll have no excuse now!