Day 151: Princesstårta

For a friend's birthday I thought I'd make a traditional Swedish celebratory cake, namely the princess cake. It usually looks like this:

English birthday cakes are made from a sponge with equal parts butter, flour and sugar or thereabouts and the sponge is the main event. In the princess cake, the main event is the cream, there is what can only be described as a metric fucktonne of cream inside one of these babies.Birthday cakes also usually are covered in Royal Icing, whereas princess cakes feature marzipan.

I made mine using a recipe from sju sorters kakor - a commonly owned Swedish cookbook - and found I was way outside my experience zone of English baking.

If you want to have a go, here is the recipe with some tips and warnings thrown in from me with my English baking experience.

Princesstårta

Ingredients:

Sponge:
4 eggs
200g sugar
100g plain flour
100g cornflour
2 tsp baking powder

Filling:
Vanilla cream - 150ml single cream, 1 egg yolk, 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 tbsp cornflour,  2tsp vanilla sugar
4 gelatin sheets
300ml double cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Raspberry jam

Green marzipan, or marzipan and food colouring, to cover.

To make the sponge: 
Whisk eggs and sugar together until thick and pale yellow. In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients then sift them from a height into the eggs and fold together, get as much air in as possible for a raised cake.
Bake in a lined 22cm pan with removable base at 175 C for 40 mins.

Warning: The cake behaves a bit like a meringue and forms a solid dome in the middle. I covered mine with foil while baking to stop it from burning but do not open the door during cooking as the cake will sink.

To fill:
Wait until the cake is completely cold.
Put the gelatin sheets in some shallow cold water to soak for at least 5 mins. Then make the vanilla cream. Put the egg and cream in a pan and heat. Add a little bit of this liquid to the cornflour and make a paste. Add the warm milk and egg mix to the paste, mix together then return to the saucepan to heat and thicken. This stops lumps forming. Remove from the heat then add vanilla to the custard and gelatin, stirring to dissolve.

When the custard is cold, whip the cream until thick and fold into the custard. Cut the cake into 3 slices (carefully!) spread a layer of jam followed by a third of the cream, then add a layer on top and repeat. Try to pile the filling in the middle to make a dome shape. Put the remainder of the cream all over the cake to stick the marzipan to the sponge. Roll out the marzipan and place over the cake, trying not to make pleats.

Mine turned out like this:

Good luck! Lycka till!