Double Daring Bakers: Mirror Cake

Finally, the much anticipated mirror cake! This was a Daring Bakers recipe from early 2007. I joined the group in December that year and there were still folks talking about the Strawberry Mirror cake. It is impressive looking, that's for sure.

The top is a shiny mirror like surface of jellied berry juice. In my case, I used strawberries and some other mixed berries- blackberry, raspberry and blueberry. I think one of the challenges that people face when making this is resisting the temptation to pour a bunch of juice on the top. The thin, only 1/16" layer of the mirror is really elegant once it's done, but doesn't feel like enough when you're pouring it on.

To assemble the cake, you make a Bavarian cream with fruit puree and fill the bottom of a spring form pan. You situate a layer of sponge cake in the cream, add more Bavarian cream, another cake layer, and top with more cream. My layering job filled the pan to the very top, so I improvised with a collar made of transparency paper- a tip learned from making the French Yule Log in December, thank you Daring Bakers! I was able to pour the juice layer on top and it set up without too much of it leaking down the sides. Whew!

Here's the cake firming up with the collar made of strips of transparency paper (yes it's taller than is needed). This actually worked out pretty well. I was able to smooth the top of the cream against the edge of the pan and get a nice even layer of the fruit jelly. On some of the images I found of the mirror cake, I noticed that it was pretty when whole, but any unevenness in the mirror layer was noticeable once it was cut. The accident of getting the pan too full is one I will definitely repeat!

See this post for the recipe. We liked this one a lot. Sort of reminiscent of the Strawberry Maria which was also a favorite.

Happy Baking!
-Janet

Temper, Temper

With forks still in our mouths, both of us said, "This is a great cake!"

Strawberry Maria (pg 184)

The Strawberry Maria has 1 recipe Genoise au Chocolat (pg 129), 1 recipe syrup flavored with Grand Marnier (pg 129), 1 recipe Strawberry Cloud Cream (pg 264), 1 Chocolate Lattice Band (pg 388) and strawberries dipped in chocolate.

J was so happy with the photo of this showcase cake, that her enthusiasm made the entire baking time fun. And, if we hadn't taken the class at La Tulipe, we'd never have had the confidence to do the lattice work with chocolate, which turned out so beautifully.

Tempering chocolate isn't nearly as frightening as I originally thought. We learned in the class about the 4 kinds of crystals in the chocolate structure and that the melting point of each of them is slightly different. Tempering involves melting teh chocoalte, cooling it so that a crystal in that chocolate (the one you want) begins to form, then heating it again so that the other kinds of crystals (the ones you don't want) don't form.

It sounds complicated, and it helps to have had a trained professional, in a professional kitchen show you how. I am beginning to see how working with chocolate could be a whole life's work. There is much to know about chocolate and how to be creative and do more daring things. But the basics- melt, cool, melt keeping it a little cooler but still workable- are not tough!! It see ms like some kind of mystical process, but

we said if those teenagers who work at Godiva in the mall can do it, so can we. We've had professional instruction after all.

We dipped the strawberries into chocolate, drizzled stripes on them and J suggested we melt some white chocolate to drizzle over them. What a hit. The texture of both dark and white stripes looked really cool.

The genoise came together quite nicely. Actually this whole section of genoise has come together nicely. The syrup, well, who doesn't like sugar syrup? And, can anything be bad if it has Grand Marnier?

Strawberry Cloud cream is a fancy way of saying strawberry flavored whipped cream. We did the same thing to strawberries that we did to raspberries -- take frozen ones, thaw them, capture the juice, bowl i t down, puree the fruit, blend. Add a cup or so to the whipped cream. Really simple now, but in the midst of doing this, we forgot to measure the pureed bit and ended up with what looked like the beginning of a very soft serve ice cream. So, we remade it. Urgh, the basics of measuring still bites us in the butt sometimes. It turned out quite nice.

Another cake that sounded good, looked good, and tasted good. One year ago, we would have been freaked out and probably not tried the lattice band. But, this really was easy to put together. We are so happy with this one, we will each make it again.

Now that I've at least faced my fear of chocolate, I hope to overcome my fear of piping. Who knows.

Robb