While none of us know for sure whether there is another life ahead of this one, I can offer some hope using cake as inspiration. I can definitely prove that cakes can have other lives, and most important, is that the next life of a cake can be even better than the last.
The main research agent in this experiment is a layer of chocolate cake. But any chocolate or vanilla cake will do. I used my recipe here.
I had frozen this lonesome layer in cling- wrap and removed it just before I was going to make the layer cakes. Don’t default on the freezing part as it is the coldness of the freezer that allows one to cut out neater circles. Fresh cake will just crumble when handled this way.
But before removing the cakes from the freezer, make some filling. I used strawberry buttercream but you could use chocolate or vanilla buttercream, whipped ganache or whipped cream. (see frostings)
And if you can’t be bothered to make a strawberry sauce, you can add 2-3 tablespoons of raspberry or strawberry jam to your buttercream..
Strawberry Buttercream
- 250g or any small pack of strawberries.
- juice of half a lemon
- 3-5 TB of sugar (depending on the sweetness of the berry)
To start with, I cook down a pack of strawberries and add it to the buttercream. You can do this with any berries eg blueberries, raspberries, cherries or blackberries.
I washed and hulled the strawberries. I cut them into smaller pieces, placed them in a small saucepan over medium heat, added a spritz of lemon juice, some sugar depending on the tartness of the strawberries and cooked them down to a pulp.
Sweeten the puree depending on how tart your strawberries are. Don’t make this sauce too sweet as you need some tartness to combat the sweetness of the icing sugar in the buttercream.
Berries cook down very quickly. In 10 minutes you will have a loosely chunky mixture. You can remove it and blitz it in a food processor or emersion blender, or cook it even further until the fruit pieces completely disintegrate.
I like the small pieces of fruit in the buttercream and omit the blending part.
Buttercream ingredients
- 125g butter
- 1 1/2c icing sugar sifted
- 3-5TB of strawberry sauce
Method
- Using an electric beater, beat butter till pale and creamy.
- Add icing sugar and beat til smooth and well combined.
- Scrape down sides of bowl so that all the icing sugar is incorporated.
- Add strawberry puree and beat till creamy, fluffy and smooth.
- make sure your strawberry puree is not fridge cold as this will make your buttercream split. Slightly warm it in the microwave for a few seconds so that it is ever so lightly warmed and then add it to the buttercream.
Assembling mini cakes
- Remove cake from freezer.
- Using a 7cm round cutter, cut out small circles.
- Slice circles in half horizontally.
- Once all circles are cut, wipe away crumbs from the inside of the cutter.
- Place cutter on a flat surface.
- Add first circle in cutter.
- Using a small star nozzle, fill a small piping bag with buttercream.
- Pipe small dollops on the surface of the first layer of cake.
- Top with next layer.
- Pipe another layer of buttercream.
- Carefully top with last cake layer.
- Gently remove cutter.
- As you make each mini cake, keep it in the fridge.
- Wipe the insides of your circle cutter and finish the rest of the cake rounds.
- Once all rounds have been done, using remaining buttercream and pipe rosettes on the top of the cake.
- Decorate with some fresh strawberries.
