what is it with this kitchen and cake

[rushthatspeaks]

for an adequate description of today imagine Ruth's birthday cake stepping on a human face, forever

I mean I am declaring victory

but four-hour cake

I knew it was going to be a lot of work but four solid hours on my feet with no breaks

I made jam

I made currant-flavored simple syrup

I made the Utena rose seal out of marzipan

it is called a Swedish princess cake: there are three layers of cake (raspberry-flavored, soaked in simple syrup); surrounding the middle one are two layers of homemade raspberry-dried currant jam & two layers of homemade custard mixed with fresh raspberries

WHICH TURNED OUT TO BE STRUCTURAL (the fresh raspberries I mean)

and then it is frosted with a whipped-cream custard blend and decorated with marzipan (it's really supposed to be covered with marzipan as though almond paste were fondant but who has that much marzipan)(in fact it's supposed to be covered with marzipan which has been dyed green in the traditional manner but I just did not go there)

if the species is called princess cake it has to have the Utena seal on it, I think that's a law

I am pretty sure it is going to be the best cake I have ever made, and it needs to be if it is going to earn its keep around here (although that was a lot of fun)

you don't want to know what the kitchen looks like

happy belated birthday to my best beloved wife, for whom I would cheerfully have made a cake with triple the fiddliness, although at that point I would also have scheduled rest breaks

JUST WATCH NEXT YEAR I'LL DECIDE TO MAKE HOMEMADE NAPOLEONS

whew.

Comments

[movingfinger]

Home-made princess cake.

This is madness. A splended, beautiful madness. But, madness no less.

I am surprised you got through it in only four hours.

I salute you.


ETA: Your version seems waaaaay more elaborate than anything I've eaten. I have only had two layers, with a filling of jam and cream (no syrup soaking, nor fresh fruit). For the marzipan, one buys sheets of it ready rolled thin, to be draped and fitted, and tints them.

[rushthatspeaks]

That makes so much sense with the marzipan sheets! I tried to roll the marzipan I did have to see if I could get it thin enough, and the answer was 'yes but it will be infinitely fiddly and you don't have enough to do anything more than the top so just make some decorations instead'.

Some of the elaborate was improvisational-- for instance some of the raspberries had gone off so I didn't have as many as I wanted, so I needed to stretch the jam with dried currants, which therefore needed to be plumped because you can't really do jam of a thing with no water in it at all. Then I made the simple syrup with the currant-plumping water = better-tasting than just sugar syrup.

Some of the elaborate was because I already have a perfectly good custard recipe, so why not use it.

And some was because I will do anything to keep from having to go out to the store (and, for instance, buy more raspberries).

I've never had this sort of cake before but licking the bowls for the individual steps was promising. We're having it tomorrow. Where does one wind up having these usually? Actually in Sweden?

[movingfinger]

There's a variant called queen cake, too. You can tell it from princess cake on the trolley or in the case because the marzipan is white. Personally I prefer princess cake.

Both are a staple, standard item for Sweden, just about every fancy bakery will sell them by the slice (bread bakers no). You can sometimes find princess cakes in the freezers at Ikea. We buy them occasionally from a Russian bakery nearby (which is AFAIK not near you).

In your area, if you have a Scandinavian-specialty grocery (Germans might also have something) or commercial baking supplier, they might at least know what it is. A Scandinavian bakery might be able to help; there was a Danish bakery in Medford and they might be doing them. I guess if you see princess cake in a baker's case, you should ask about buying sheet marzipan from them---they have to be buying the cake-sized prepared sheets. (Bakers buy ready-to-use sheets of plain fondant, too.)

One also uses a princess cake pan, which is deep and domed; you bake the cake in that and split it. I think the King Arthur catalog was selling these for a while, or Martha Stewart. It's a great pan for any cake like that that you split and fill---I have several suitable recipes, for example for a cake that gets hollowed out and filled with ganache, or you could do a modified Boston cream pie in it. The domed top looks so nice.

I have a friend who does wedding cakes with marzipan coating ("proper wedding cakes" as those who feel that way call them) and I don't know whether she's rolling her own or buying it.

The rolling is finicky and it helps to have very fresh marzipan; it dries out and will be very difficult to work. KA must have fresher marzipan, you don't know how long those tubes of Odense have been sitting in the supermarket.

I'm puzzled about the simple syrup because all the princess cake I have had has been very light, and that would seem to make it into something heavier and denser...

[rushthatspeaks]

The syrup does make it a little heavier, but also moister, which this particular batter wants.

May see if bakeries around here do a) this cake, for comparison and b) sheet marzipan. My marzipan was very very old and kneading a little water and oil into it made it perfectly workable but it wouldn't have made a sheet.

I want one of those domed pans now. They sound amazing.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Honestly, the homemade Napoleons sound like less trouble. I've made those, and doing them even for the very first time was simpler than this sounds.

It also sounds incredibly worth it, though, marzipan coating or no marzipan coating. (I love that marzipan-as-fondant trick, but when I do it my recipe starts with, "First, buy five pounds of almonds." And then it takes at least two days, because you have to allow time for whatever you use to grind the almonds to blow up, splattering almond oil everywhere and possibly requiring you to replace the grinding equipment.)

[rushthatspeaks]

... I am strangely interested by your marzipan process, as I have never actually made the stuff. On the other hand, I should probably not do that to my poor Cuisinart-- I'm not even sure it could. Still, tempting.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

No, you should not do that to your Cuisinart, but only because the Cuisinart probably isn't the machine of choice for marzipan.

And really, that's the only problem with making it from scratch -- well, that and the maddening American insistence that we not have bitter almonds available domestically, because of the cyanide and all. As long as you have a source for good fresh almonds (or pistachios, which give you a different flavor but work beautifully), the formula is ridiculously simple. Blanch your almonds, trying not to get them too wet in the process. Dry them to the extent necessary: you want them almond-textured, not rubbery. Then grind them into a paste and mix them with poured fondant, probably flavored with oil of almond because of the way you couldn't find true bitter almonds to mix in with the sweet ones. An imperfect poured fondant will do for this, because all you really care about is having enough fondant in there to make a nice, workable paste. (You'll notice that I'm not giving amounts here. That's because I have no idea, really: it's like making a yeast bread, where you add flour until the dough feels right.)

Like a yeast dough, the mixture will want to be kneaded. As you do so, it will become almond-paste-like and smooth and plastic. If it doesn't, you add more fondant until it does. Wrap it tightly, let it ripen for a day or so (or while you bake everything else, in emergencies), and you're good to go. Commercial marzipan goes heavier on the sugar than this process will require, but you can make it as sweet as you want simply by adding more fondant and kneading. Or even by adding powdered sugar, although the texture won't be as good.

But what makes all of this work, or not, is the texture of your ground nuts. For marzipan, and as far as I know only for marzipan, you want the grinding to bring out a good deal of oil: that plasticizes it and marries with the fondant to make a product that you can build roses or seals or cake coatings from. You don't want a nut paste,* but you do want something other than the delicate, non-oily ground nuts you'd use for a torte layer. The best tool I know of for this is an old-fashioned meat grinder, but unless you have or can find or borrow one made of metal, it's not likely to stand up to grinding almonds, much less grinding the paste three or four times until the texture is right. I once tried to use the heavy-duty plastic attachment for a Kitchenaid stand mixer, and had it quite literally explode under the pressure, leaving me with almond oil to be cleaned off the ceiling. (Although to be fair, it might have handled half a pound or so of almonds. Enough for marzipan for an entire wedding party was too much for it, though.) I'm not sure the Cuisinart would quite do it -- though if it were what I had, I'd certainly give it a try rather than do without the almond paste.

The reason I've done this more than once is that as you might suspect, you wind up with really sensational almond paste. Of the sort where if you're me you'd better make a few pounds more than you theoretically need, because you're going to be eating a pound or two on the spot.

*Oops. I mean, you don't want a nut butter. You do want something pasty, but you don't want it to fall over that edge where there's no grain at all left.

I'd tell you about glazing anything you model out of it with gum arabic, but I feel very sure you already know about that.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

PIX OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I WILL GET RIGHT ON THAT TOMORROW

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

'zackly!

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

sounds like whoa.

and yeah, pics please.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Homemade Napoleons sound so much easier than this.

Unless you mean conquering most of Europe, in which case only marginally easier.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

Rush has to survive her equally insane Thanksgiving plans first, though.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

... ah, you heard about those. See, that will have multiple cooks. And-- the recipe specifies-- alcohol. Only recipe I've ever seen which gives you a recipe for the drinks you should have while making it.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I am starting to think the cake could conquer Europe by itself. As apparently the amount we have would serve an army-- it's one of those cakes where you eat a quarter-inch slice and oh hey that was dinner.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Sounds heavenly--catch it before it ascends!

Nine

[jinian.livejournal.com]

marzipan which has been dyed green in the traditional manner

... with arsenic?

Add me to the "desperately want pics" list, though it seems utterly clear that it happened.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Well I dyed it with pandanus leaf extract and if that's not traditional I don't want to be right :)

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Pretty sure there are no pandanus trees native to Sweden, but you should really win some kind of foodie award for this whole thing. :)

Not wanting to be right by putting arsenic in your food is fairly reasonable. I don't think that's really how they dyed marzipan. My mind went to green wallpaper traditionally dyed with arsenic but leading to madness -> well there was clearly some madness involved with this cake. (Aha! Some arsenic-based green sweets did exist, though!)

[foleyartist1.livejournal.com]

PICS!!!!!

When Ikea and the one Swedish cafe I've actually been to in Sweden make Princess Cake, they clearly agree with you on the annoyance and gratuitousness of covering an entire full-sized cake with marzipan, and solve the problem by making only tiny one-person cakes, so they can be entirely covered with marzipan yet trick the observer into believing that this is a sane thing to do.

Your version sounds SO MUCH BETTER than the ones I've had, though, so they're clearly abandoning tradition and just phoning it in now. You are officially more Swedish than the Swedes!

Also, obviously it's a law to have the Rose Seal!

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I can't quite imagine a one-person version of this thing. I may need to see if the IKEA around here does it.

[tiamat360.livejournal.com]

Nthing the request for pics.

This cake sounds glorious :).

[desperance.livejournal.com]

RECIPE OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!

(Also, huh? I cover an entire cake with marzipan every year. It's called a Christmas cake, and the marzipan is then hidden by icing, but even so. Cake, covered in marzipan. Which I make myself, natch, to be sure I have enough. S'easy.)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

See next entry!

I had a quarter-pound of marzipan, which had been In The Back for some length of time. Next time I will probably make it myself.

[sovay]

for an adequate description of today imagine Ruth's birthday cake stepping on a human face, forever

There are ways in which I am very sad to have been out of town while this cake was constructed. There are also ways in which I know that if I had been anything like within range, it would have tried to kill me.

JUST WATCH NEXT YEAR I'LL DECIDE TO MAKE HOMEMADE NAPOLEONS

We can square them off against the flaming Talleyrand.