Blueberry, Lemon and Coconut Cake

Five years have passed by since I started blogging. This blog has certainly kept me busy and distracted from all of life's stresses and hard times. Whenever I need an escape to a more peaceful and calmer world, I run to my little kitchen and start mixing, kneading, shaping and decorating. Time flies when you are doing something you love and you just enjoy every single moment!

To celebrate the blog's fifth year anniversary and all the beautiful moments it helped me to live, I decided to make a simple, easy, yet delicious cake with vibrant, fresh and summery flavors.

I´m not revealing any secret when I say that I´m obsessed with berries, all kind of summer berries, and I just love to eat them fresh or use them in my baked recipes. Blueberries were my choice for this cake and I married their flavor with that of lemons and coconuts. Trust me when I tell you, the result was amazing! Give this cake a try and you won't be sorry!

Now for the sponge you need for five 15 cm in diameter pans:

• 5 eggs (at room temperature)
• 150 g sugar
• 150 g cake flour
• dash of salt
• 60 g melted butter
• Zest of 2 big lemons
• 1 tsp of kirsh (optional)
• 50 g shredded coconut

Combine sugar, eggs, lemon zest, kirsh and salt and start whisking at low speed and then start increasing until you get to the highest one; beat for at least 5 minutes. The mixture should triple in volume, become very pale in color and with a cloud-like texture.

Add the flour and the coconut. Mix gently with a spatula until everything is incorporated. Finally, add the butter and mix slowly.

Pour the batter in the greased and lined pans.
If you don´t have 5 pans of the same size, pour the batter into 2 pans and then once baked slice your cakes. Be careful that the baking time will vary as you change the size of the pans.

Bake the cake in a preheated oven (160 C) for about 18-20 minutes. Leave the cakes to cool for 5 minutes in the pan then unmold and transfer them to a cooling rack.

For the blueberry sauce:

• 250 g fresh or frozen blueberries
• 125 g sugar
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• half vanilla pod

Combine everything and cook the berries for about 15 min, on a very gentle heat. If the sauce is too runny, just scoop out some of the liquid, but reserve to serve with the cake.

For the frosting:

• 150 g soft butter
• 50 g cream cheese or mascarpone
• 100 to 150 powder sugar
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Combine butter, cheese and sugar and beat until  fluffy and pale, add the lemon juice and beat for few seconds.

To assemble:

Place a bit of the frosting on the cake board and then place the first layer. Pipe some of the frosting on the cake and spread with a spatula to cover the whole layer then pipe a small circle round the edge.In the middle of the cake layer add a tbsp or 2 of the blueberry sauce and then top with another layer. Repeat until you have covered all the layers,

Add some frosting on the top and edges, smooth with a scraper then decorate as you wish. I covered the top with fresh plump blueberries and multi-colored pansies and added some petals and flowers on the sides too.

Do make this cake and enjoy its light and summery flavors.

From now and until the sixth year blog anniversary keep on baking!

Coffee Sponge Cake with White Chocolate and Cardamom Ganache!

It's become a habit of mine to celebrate my blog's anniversary in order to remind why I embarked on this journey in the first place. My blog turns four years old and my passion for cooking and baking keeps on growing motivated by all the wonderful interactions I had and I'm still having with bloggers and foodies from all corners of the globe.

For this occasion, I had to think of an easy to make cake that is really delicious and can be readily decorated for that extra effect.

Stacked cakes are best made with a base of sponge cake. Sponge cakes are easy to make and can be flavored in infinite ways leaving the door wide open for your imagination. As I really love the flavor coffee gives in cakes, I decided to go for coffee and marry flavors that work well with it. The first spice that I thought of as being coffee's ideal pair is cardamom. Between dark chocolate and white chocolate, I find that cardamom works better with the latter, therefore I used it. This flavor combination is not entirely new to me as I used it before and shared it  before in this post.

The end result was a light, spongy and delicious cake with a spicy and creamy ganache. For extra flavor and a beautiful presentation I made chocolate mirror glaze. It was the perfect topping for this blog-versary cake!

Now for the sponge you need: (4 x 15cm pan)

• 5 eggs
• 150 g sugar
• 150 g cake flour
• dash of salt
• 60 g melted butter
• 2 tsps of coffee melted in 1 tsp of water
• 1 tsp coffee liqueur (optional)

First you need to put some water in a pan and heat the water to a simmer, Combine sugar, eggs, coffee and liqueur if using  in a big bowl and place over the pan with the simmering water. Whisk vigorously for about 5 minutes or until it doubles in size.The mix should reach 60 C. 

Turn off the heat and remove the pan with the mix off heat. from the pan, and keep whisking with an electrical whisk until you obtain a pale and really think mixture that is triple in volume! Now fold in the flour and salt, and at the end drizzle over the melted butter and gently fold it in!

Separate the batter into the greased pans and bake for about 15 min in a preheated oven (170C). Let them cool for about 10 min then remove the cakes from the pans and let them cool completely. You can make the cake the day before.

For the ganache you need:

• 450 g white chocolate
• 300 ml of cream (you can reduce or add more to change the consistency of the ganache)
• 60 g of butter
• 1 tsp of ground cardamom
• 1 tsp of coffee liqueur or coffee melted in water

Chop the chocolate and place it in a bowl. Heat the cream and before it boils pour it over the chocolate, stir to melt  then add the butter and stir again. Add the cardamom and coffee and let it cool a bit. Now you can add it as it is over the cake or beat it with a whisk until creamy and fluffy. This is what I did, the ganache becomes really creamy and easier to pipe!

For the assembly:

Place one of the cakes on a cake board, generously frost it then top it with another cake layer and so on.

Decorate as you wish. In my case after frosting the cake I poured some dark chocolate  mirror glaze then piped some rosettes from the frosting, sprinkled some dulcey chocoloate and white chocolate shaves,  and splashed some gold dust over the rosettes and the glaze!

For the chocolate mirror glaze I used this recipe, but I  made half the batch, and even using half of the amount in this recipe I did not need all the glaze I made.

Now all you need is to cut a piece and dig in! Enjoy!

Ricotta, Lemon and Rosemary Cake; Three Years and Counting!

Another year has gone by and my blogging adventure now turns three. It´s impressive how time flies by, but it's even more impressive how I learned from sharing recipes with like-minded foodies myself, trying their recipes and taking note of their tips and advices.

I started thinking about a cake for this occasion a while ago. I had many ideas on my mind, but I finally went with an inspiration I had during my visit to Rome back in Easter. It wasn't my first time in this enchanting city, but as usual, it still managed to amaze me especially when I ventured out of the usual touristic hotspots.

It's needless to say what a festival for the sight and the palate Italy can be. I have been always a huge fan of Italian cuisine with all it has to offer! When I was in Rome I couldn't have enough of the usual Italian delicacies, but most importantly, I couldn't have enough gelato. Check with the locals for the best gelaterias and do pay at least one a visit. You will have a really hard time deciding which flavors to pick as there are so many on offer! My cousin recommended a gelateria located behind the famous Piazza Navona not too far from the St. Angelo bridge. As usual, the flavors on offer were just too many to sample in one visit, so I picked three scoops, one of which had yogurt, honey, rosemary and lemons. This combination just worked and I immediately knew I had to make something featuring these flavors all together. 

Therefore, for my blog's third year anniversary, I decided to use this Italian flavor combination in the celebration cake. Now, as usual I like to tweak things based on what I see works best but sometimes based on more mundane issues. Since I had three packets of ricotta in the fridge I decided to substitute the yogurt with ricotta which is after all a quintessentially Italian ingredient. Ricotta like yogurt does wonders in cakes, affecting both the flavor by making it richer and creamier and the texture by making lighter and  moist. Do try to incorporate ricotta in your baking and I am sure you will use it again and again. You can even make ricotta at home, I hope I will share with you this particular how-to soon.

Now, enough talking and let´s start baking.
For the cake you need: (3x15 cm cake pan)

• 4 eggs, separated and at room temperature
• 240 g cake flour
• 200 g fresh ricotta
• 100 g soft butter
• 110 g white sugar
• 110 honey (I used rosemary honey)
• 1 or 2 tbsp of lemon zest (adjust to your taste)
• 1 or 2 tbsp of finely chopped rosemary (again adjust to your taste)
• 1 tsp of baking soda
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 20 ml of lemon juice (4 tsp)

First combine the flour, salt and baking soda and sift.

In a mixing bowl, combine butter, sugar, honey, lemon zest and rosemary, and beat until creamy and well combined. Add the ricotta and beat again until combined, then the egg yolks and again you need to whisk! To that mix, fold in the flour mixture with a spatula and then add the lemon juice.

Add a dash of salt and few drops of lemon juice to the egg whites and beat them till stiff peaks are formed.

Fold the egg whites with the ricotta mixture gently so you don't lose all the air from the whites.

Once everything is well combined, divide the batter into 3 pans, previously greased and covered with parchment paper, and bake between 25 to 30 min in a preheated oven (170C). I usually check on my cakes after 20-22 min, by inserting a skewer in the middle of the cake, if it comes clean then it's time to take the cake out of the oven, if not, leave it for few more minutes.
If you don´t want to use three 15 cm in diameter pans, you can use two ones of 20 cm in diameter. 

Let the cakes rest in the pan for 5 min, then let them cool down completely on a cooling rack.

For the frosting you will need:

• 200 g soft butter
• 200 g powdered sugar
• 80 g cream cheese or ricotta
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Combine all ingredients but the lemon juice, beat until creamy and almost white in color. Add the lemon juice and beat again until combined.

Now the assembling is up to you. I opted for a naked cake i.e. a cake that's not completely frosted. I put a really generous layer of filling between the stacked cakes and then did a thin crumb coat to the outer edges covering only parts of the cakes and keeping the rest mostly visible.
In keeping with the Italian, and specifically Roman, theme of the cake, I decorated with a few branches of rosemary assembled to look like a Roman crown.

This cake is beyond delicious. It fits the bill on some many levels. It is rich, lemony, creamy, crumbly and refreshing; it does  have it all!