July Daring Baker Challenge

Still in it's tin, mirror mirror reflecting the window above.
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Strawberry Mirror Cake

It’s that time of month again, and time to post about the July Daring Baker Challenge. This month it was a pretty pink cake called a strawberry mirror cake., a sponge cake with a set Bavarian strawberry cream and finished with a shiny ‘mirror’ on top. It is adapted from Cakes and Pastries At The Academy by the California Culinary Academy (1993).

The cake comprised the sponge, which is a fat-less genoise style cake, which relies on the air beaten into eggs and sugar as it’s rising factor. It should have been baked in a wide Swiss roll tin (jelly roll pan), but I didn’t have the right size – 11 x 17 inch – I’ve got bigger and smaller buth not that one! The cake was to be baked in the tin, then 2 x 8 inch circles cut out once it has baked and cooled. I used 2 x 8 inch round tins instead, and used about two thirds of the batter, I used a bit too much, but more of this later… There is also a kirsch soaking syrup for the sponges.

You can see the lower lip here, it's a small lip, but it's there!

The next stage was to make a sieved puree of strawberries to fold into a set cooked custard mixture, and then the whole lot is set with gelatin, the recipe said you could add a little red food colouring but I liked the pale pink natural colour. This is not an anti colouring comment, I like to colour my icings on cakes! – but it didn’t need it here for me.

The cake is assembled by placing an 8 inch round cake in a 10 inch tin, brushing over some of the kirsch soaking liquid, pouring over some bavarian cream, then the same again – cake, soaking liquid and cream. This it then set in the fridge to rest for a few hours.

See the wobbly mirror and the lush Bavarian Cream...

Meanwhile there is more to be done. A strawberry juice is made by chopping 18 oz of strawberries and cooking them (bashed up a bit first with a potato masher) with some sugar and water, just slowly for 10 minutes. After that the juice is strained through a sieve and the berries discarded. The juice was a magnificent scarlet colour, and there was no red food colouring needed here either, as the colour was so ruby red anyway. There was some other flavourings added in the form of lemon juice, kirsch and also a little water, then set with gelatine. I varied the method a bit here because the gelatin was to be melted into the strawberry juice, but I melted it into the lemon, kirsch and water so the mirror layer cooled down much more quickly. The set bavarian and cake came out of the fridge and the mirror was poured over, it was supposed to be a film, but it tasted so good I added as much as I could get in the tin! Also, because my cakes were a little larger than they should have been I had a lower lip of cream round the cakes (this is easier to see in the pictures than to describe), so I hoped the mirror would cover my over generosity! It was quite tricky to carry to the fridge and next time I'd do the pouring of the juice much closer to the fridge. Luckily dear Hubby is quite tall, so he took pity on me and manouevered it onto the top shelf of the fridge - without any spillage at all!

There is a slight ruffle on the top edge, little fingers were very keen to get a taste!

It was a pretty cake, and it tasted good together, the cake, strawberry cream and mirror juice. The juice was absolutely bursting with strawberry flavour. This cake was a hit with my family, and for a special Summer time pudding I would certainly make this one again.

If you fancy trying it here is the link for the recipe, on the lovely Peabody’s site. Thanks also to Peabody for choosing such a lovely cake this month! To see other Daring Bakers cakes visit the http://daringbakersblogroll.blogspot.com/ Blog Roll site and click away!