Birthday cake! (Gluten Free + lactose Free)

Thursday 11 June 2015






For my boyfriend's sister birthday I decided to try something new. Even though we had a gift ready, I thought that I'd like to prepare something special. Personally, I believe that spending hours in the kitchen and then sharing a meal together with others shows how much we care about them. And I love spoiling my loved ones with food. It can be an early morning sandwich with a favourite smoothie or a special dinner by which we can sit for hours, talk and laugh.

Having spent days on going through many food blogs, different recipes and pinterest pictures I got extremely excited about baking a proper birthday cake. With layers, frosting, candles and decoration.

I must admit this was my second trial of making a cake with many layers and frosting all around. The first one..., lets just say was not as good as I hoped :). The cake base itself was fine. The recipe I got thanks to a Polish blogger (lisia-kawiarenka.blogspot.dk) made my life so much easier, and better! The sponge cake is simple, does not require many ingredients and most importantly I had no troubles with cutting it or shaping nicely so that the whole cake had a desired shape and looks. The frosting is another story....
Without much thinking I decided to prepare a butter based frosting. Not only did it seem to look nice but I also hoped it will taste fine. Nothing like this! I turned out nicely looking (more or less... ok, less!). But the taste was just terrible in my opinion. Very, very heavy.
So I looked through my fridge and decided to go with another approach. I used a light cream cheese and combined it with a smaller amount of butter and powdered sugar. This time the result was great.
In the end the cake turned out to look nice and taste really wonderful. Of course with more practise I hope to be better at the decorating part... My kitchen looked interesting after I was finished with covering the cake with frosting!






Ingredients

Sponge cake (16 cm baking form)
3 eggs
130 g of sugar
0,3 cup of corn flour
0,3 cup of potato flour

Frosting
300 g of cream cheese (lactose free)
150 g of butter (lactose free)
3/4 cup of powdered sugar

Additional
Fresh strawberries
Dried raspberries for decoration


Preparation

Sponge cake

> Preheat the oven to 160-170 degrees, then cover the bottom of the baking form with baking paper. (Sides should not be covered)

> Separate egg whites from egg yolks. Start mixing the egg whites until they get thick. Gradually add sugar and then the egg yolks (one by one, while mixing). Keep mixing until the batter is smooth.

> Add flour to the batter and mix together either using a spoon or with a mixer at the lowest speed.

> Pour the batter into the prepared baking form and bake for 30-40 minutes. (Avoid opening the oven door while baking)

> Once the cake sponge is ready, take it out from the oven and carefully throw it (in the form) down to the table from the height of approximately 50-60 cm. This will make the cake flat and well shaped. (Although it sounds a little bit confusing!)

Cream and Frosting


> Beat the butter until it is light and creamy. Then add powdered sugar and keep on mixing until it gets smooth. Beat in the cream afterwards and put the ready mixture in the fridge for a while. It will thicken and get more stiff, which makes it easier to distribute it on the cake afterwards.

> Spread a thin layer of the cream on the cake layers using a spatula. Refrigerate for around 15 minutes. Optionally put some freshly cut strawberries in the middle of each sponge cake. (Avoid putting them close to the edges, as this will make it hard to cover it with the frosting in the end.)
Afterwards spread the remaining frosting all over the cake.

> Decorate with fresh fruit, or dried decorative fruit, as I did.









 
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