Brownie cake

The brownie idea has been there since the beginning. I wanted some "chocolatey" cake to decorate. The question was what to fill it with. So I decided to try different fillings and let somebody be judge of it. I tried to fill the brownie with caramel whipped cream and sprinkle it with caramel sauce. I also tried a filling with Nutella whipped cream. Both were good. But the one with Nutella was clearly very chocolatey. And I really loved the caramel whipped cream myself. And everybody that tried that one actually voted for it.

When I was doing the real cake, I forgot the sprinkling with caramel sauce. Probably due to the fact that I actually knew the sugar paste would be very sweet already. If I do this again, I will do the following: Multiply the brownie recipe with 1,5. Only cut it in half. Fill it with caramel cream and cover it completely with cream. Make fluff tops. Sprinkle with the caramel sauce. Will be sooo good I believe. Nothing more than that.

But well, that is the future. Here, as the cake was for a Christening, I just felt some kind of decoration and sugar paste kind of cover was required. So this is the recipe for the cake. I actually served with passion fruit on the side. Personally, I was not so excited about the combination. But well....The fact that the brownie was baked a little too long did not help either.

2013-10-26

And by the way, next time I have to bake a cake for a baby or something and come up with the idea of making a bear, please stop me... Those bears of mine always look somewhat ugly. Not creepy. But they do not get any cuter... Whatever I do.... Especially not with sugar paste that falls apart... :(

2013-10-26

Or if I really want to do bears... then please force me to do some exercising before the "big day"...

Ingredients

Brownie cake (please use 1,5 times the given ingredients)
Caramel cream (make it 1,5 times also)
Italian Marengue Buttercream (a third of the recipe will be enough to cover it once externally)

Sugar paste (I would guess that more or less half of the recipe will be needed to cover this cake including some decoration.)

 Instructions

I coloured the sugar paste with brown colour as I wanted it to become  kind of cappuccino coloured. It turned out an ugly orange. Added more brown colour. Became too fluid. Added more sugar. Became too cracked up. Hopeless. The colour at the end became some kind of brownish-orange Autumn-like colour. Not really the "Christening" theme of choice (of anybody's choice...). As the amount of sugar paste was too little and it cracked up, it was very difficult to have any decoration to go with the cake. So well. As you see, it did look somewhat weird and ugly. And it was somewhat very much one colour only. Hey... I am not a baker... Get a grip. What did you expect from me?!

The buttercream was necessary as the sugarpaste kind of melts on regular whipped cream.

The brownie cake can be prepared in advance and frozen. As the brownie cake was completely unstable, I decided to follow the following procedure.

Cover the pan you baked the brownie in with plastic foil. Wetting up the pan will make this operation much easier. Put some of the cream at the bottom of the pan. Put the brownie cake in it. I tried to cut it in half, but it was extremely difficult and crumbled a lot. I recommend once more to make 1,5 times the amount for a a 26cm pan. Then more cream. Remember the caramel sauce I forgot. Then the cake again. If possible cover the cake again with more cream. I did not have enough cream unfortunately.

25/10-2013

Freeze in for a couple of hours. Remove from the pan. Cover with the buttercream. I am not sure why but the cream kind of slipped over the cream. Not so easy. But it worked out anyway. Put on the sugar paste on the top of it and decorate as desired. This technique makes the cake more stable.

This is how the cake looks like in the inside after a few cake eaters have been on to it.

Italian Marengue Butter Cream

This is a butter cream. So it is not low fat! And definitively not low sugar....
But if you use sugar paste, you need to have something that protects it from becoming sloppy. And butter cream is it. If you use regular cream, it will not keep "fresh" and it might sort of melt.

The taste is good. But I have some difficulties with butter cream in general. Little too heavy. But all right. Here is the recipe.

Ingredients

200gr egg whites (which maps to 7 average size eggs or 6 big)
300gr caster sugar
80ml water
450gr unsalted butter (keep at room temperature until soft)
1 tsp vanilla powder

Instructions

Whip the egg whites. They do not need to be perfectly stiff as they will have to keep being whipped after you add the hot sugar. Cook the water with the sugar until it reaches the temperature of 118 degrees Celsius. While whipping, add the hot sugar. Be careful as it is very hot. Make sure you do not hit the whips.... That might become seriously dangerous. Keep whipping until the marengue becomes cold. It will take a very long while so I recommend to use a Kitchen Aid or similar tool. Then add the vanilla powder and add little of the butter at the time. When you do that, make sure to use the lowest speed on the blender. It is supposed to become fluffy and stable butter cream.


For some reason it does not become as hard as other butter cream. Guess it has to do with the air in the egg whites. But I am not sure how long it can be in the fridge before you spread it out. I have had some in the fridge since more than one week and it still tastes delicious to be honest. But it is hard. I will maybe try to take it out of the fridge and see if it becomes softer one day... :)

Rumours go that it can "go wild". But that has not happened to me.

Caramel cream filling

This is my own recipe. Nothing off the shelf. But I did steal some tips and tricks from other recipes. For instance, for stabilizing the cream I use piping gel in minimum amounts as it does give an unwanted flavour/smell otherwise.

Ingredients

100gr caramel sauce
350gr cream
1tbs piping gel

Instructions

Heat up some 100gr cream and melt the caramel sauce in it. Let it cool in the fridge. Remember. The cream needs to be cold to whip up as desired. Put the piping gel in it. Add the rest of the cream.
Whip slowly until stable. I use my Kitchen Aid at speed 2 (even if that makes me a little nervous and sometimes I just turn it higher for some moments). Be careful and do not distract yourself. Had to throw away a whole batch because I forgot it there and it whipped to a gritty thing that could not be used for anything.... :( So again... Be very very careful... ;)