Blogging Marathon #121 Week 3, Day 3
Theme : A to Z, something sweet

I love decorating cakes with fresh cream. It’s one if the easiest ways to decorate but most importantly I love the taste better than that of buttercream. The main problem with fresh cream is sometimes- especially when the weather is warmer, the cream tends to be unstable. The cake layers would feel as if they are going to slide or slip.

I prefer using hand mixer over stand mixer for whipping heavy cream. One way to know whether the cream has reached stiff peak stage is to slowly tilt the mixing bowl. If it’s the right stage, you would be able to hold it upside down and yet the cream won’t fall down. If it feels as if the cream is moving, then it’s not ready.

I saw a few YouTube videos which mentioned room temperature mascarpone cheese as a stabilizer. I had a box and gave it a try. I love this method. The cream feels a lot more stable and doesn’t feel like the layers is going to skip or slide. I can see myself sticking with this method for a long time! Cream cheese is also a stabilizer but it alters the taste a bit and also I could see cracks on a cake I had decorated two days ahead. So it’s not something I would try again.

My go to recipe for vanilla cake is this one for Hot Milk Cake and that’s what I have gone for this cake too. It’s one of the most reliable recipes and I have been using it for a long long time now. Once the cake is prepared, all you need is cooled sugar syrup and fresh cream to get you started. You can introduce more flavors using fresh fruits/ berries and jams.

Read on for the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups fresh cream
• 8oz mascarpone cheese, at room temperature
• 1/4 cup icing sugar
• To assemble
  • Two 6” vanilla cake
  • Sugar syrup
  • Fresh strawberries
  • 3-4 tablespoons of Strawberry preserves/jam
  • stabilized whipped cream from above

Method:

1. In a big mixing bowl, add the fresh cream and sugar. Beat well until it almost reaches the stiff peak stage. Now add the mascarpone cheese and blend well. Switch to a rubber spatula if needed to prevent over beating the cream. The cheese has to be at room temperature or else it won’t blend in well.
2. Bake the cakes and let it cool completely. Using a sharp knife or a cake slicer, cut each cake into two layers.
3. Heat 1/2 cup sugar with 1/2 cup water until the sugar dissolves. Let it cool, this is the sugar syrup. You can flavor it by adding a tablespoon spoon of strawberry jam and then filtering it to remove the solid parts at the time of decorating.
4. Use a little of the whipped cream to a cake board to anchor the cake to the board. Now add sugar syrup to the cake layer, you can skip this step too.
5. Spread a tablespoon of jam now using an angled spatula. Arrange fresh strawberries (cut into half lengthwise and flat side down) around the borders. Fill the gaps and the inside with stabilized whipped cream.
6. Repeat with the rest of the layers. For the final top layer, cover with fresh cream and decorate with strawberries.