Another birthday cake

I love birthdays because it gives me a chance to bake cakes! Lucky for me, my “sambo” gained an extra year of wisdom recently. However, he likes whipped cream, which means I end up making the same cake every year. In a way, it is still a great way to practice on the same style and I even managed to find a fancy recipe with lots of whipped cream to make him happy on his special day. I also happened to do it this summer (the picture is in one of the earlier posts). It is a very delicious cake as well. If you are curious and know Swedish, you can find it in the book “Desserter” by Jan Hedh, whom I adore. It is called “Jordgubbsvaniljvacherin”. I tried to take a few pictures of the process but most of them are fairly uninteresting (like a bowl of red liquid that will turn into a yummy strawberry ice cream).

Meringue can be tricky when you have never done any. I remember being told to keep on whipping a few times by a teacher even though I was fairly sure to be done. It can be quite fascinating too when you turn the bowl over and nothing falls or even move. I could have shaken that spoon and the meringue would not have fallen off! You can even notice the spikes going upward against gravity. Meringues are fun!

This is the assembled cake, with the bottom layer of meringue, the layer of strawberry ice cream, then the layer of vanilla parfait and the final top layer of meringue. It will be all covered by whipped cream.

In the book, they stop at the whipped cream after adding some strawberries and the small lines of meringue. Sadly, in January, the only ones I found looked fairly dried out and were quite expensive too. Beside, I like chocolate and I just had to play with my favourite toy. I used some red chips and spread lines of melted red chocolate on a plastic ark which went into the fridge while I prepared the dark chocolate. Once it was warm enough, I covered the lines with it for a nice effect. The red turned out to be more of a dark fuchsia but it still looks very nice with the dark brown.

The final result. I had to snap the final pictures rather quickly as we ended up running a bit late and our guests showed up just as I was putting the last touches in a panicky state. They all enjoyed it (of course says the cocky chef *grins*) and I even got a request to make a cake for the next weekend. A tiramisu, among all things. I plan to practice that this weekend to make sure I am able to make a edible one. It would be embarassing to mess it up as it is for his mother... eek!