Making of: Walnut Pear Cheesecake

Again people visiting, again it's time for another cheesecake. This time it is a cheesecake filled with pear halves, everything on top of a walnut crust.

What you need:

Crust:
200 g walnuts (you can as well use ground walnuts)
melted butter (about 50 g, maybe a bit more, depending on the nuts)

Cake itself:
100 g butter
100 g sugar
2 eggs
750 g curd cheese
2 heaped tbsp. flour (I mean REALLY heaped)
100 ml single cream

Cream:
200 g honey cream cheese
150 g yoghurt


Making the crust:
Grind the nuts, then mix the ground nuts with the melted butter. The mixture should not be too greasy, but just stick together. Now, position a cake setting ring onto a cake tray. Fill the mass into the ring and press it onto the tray evenly, so that this mass will form the cake base. Let it set, while preparing the cheesecake.

Baking the cake:
Melt the butter and add it to the sugar. Mix until roughly combined and cooled down a little. (This is important because otherwise the eggs might set.) Then, add the eggs and stir again. Add curd cheese and flour, stir again, and finally add the single cream and stir for the final touch :)

Preheat the oven to 175°C, grease and flour a 26cm springform baking tin and fill in the cheese mass. Bake for about 45-60 minutes. If the cake becomes too dark too early, cover the cake with some aluminium, so that it retains its colour while baking until done.
Leave the cake in the form until it is cooled down. When it is cool, carefully remove the springform and position the cake on the walnut base.

Final touch:
Now, mix the honey cream cheese and yoghurt until they form an even mass. When the cheesecake is cooled down completely, remove the cake ring and cover the whole cake with the cream.
If you like, you are free to decorate the cake however you like. I used some walnuts and almonds... as you can see :)

Rhubarb Cake

One day my boyfriend came home with some rhubarb. Well, I have never eaten it before, let alone baking or cooking it. So, why not having a go?

Ok, I have to admit that I made this cake a while ago and I got the recipe from somewhere on the inter-net. Guess what? I haven't got the slightest idea where I have found it and I cannot find it now.
Well, so I will only roughly tell you what the cake is made of.

First, you have to make a shell out of one egg, flour, butter and a bit sugar. Mix the ingredients and press the dough into a greased and floured 26cm baking tin. Put it into the fridge while preparing the filling.

For the filling, skin 1 kg of rhubarb (mine was red on the outside and rather greenish on the inside, but there are several sorts...) and cut it into ca. 1cm slices.
Then, take one sachet of vanilla custard powder and mix the powder with some sugar (cf. sachet) and about 100ml milk. Meanwhile, cook about 300ml milk. In total it is only 400ml instead of 500, but so it should get a bit more firm. I think, I added a bit more sugar because the rhubarb was not too sweet, but again, this depends on the sort of rhubarb you use.
Stir the mixture into the hot milk. Go on stirring until the mass becomes thick. Then, fold under the rhubarb pieces.

Put everything into the shell in the tin and bake the cake at 175°C for... well that is a good question... I think it was about an hour, but better try less and check every now and then whether it is done ;)

Well, I hope my explanation is not too much of a mess and you'll have fun with it :)

Silbertor

And yet another birthday cake :)

Ok, it looks some kind of weird, but it is supposed to be the place were some of the Condraean soldiers, named stormhawks, reside. The standing one is supposed to be their reeve, calles Sarah Kupferschläger. I'm not sure whether the other one is still living or no. One the one hand, this one might just be chilling, but on the other hand, there are clothes and weapons next to him on the ground, so maybe he wanted to much stuff and Silke (their equipment manager) knocked him out ;)

Within the fondant there is vanilla and chocolate marble cake filled with cherries and vanilla butter cream.

The design is based on one of Debbie Brown's cakes which shows three 'potterish' students riding broomsticks. Well, no Potter here; Kupferschläger instead ;) 
Oh, by the way: It was the person who plays Sarah Kupferschläger who got this cake for her birthday.

If you like me to post the recipe and a how-to-do-it-thingy as well, feel free to say so. Your wish is my command :)

Theater Haberstedt

Theater Haberstedt is a LARP theatre group, which means that we play actors who play a play... Confusing? Well, it might be ;)

So, last weekend we were at one of those events again, but this time it was neither a aristocratic-political thing, nor a 'let's run around in the woods' thing, it was a 'having fun' thing. Some of my friends an me, we were there as said theatre group.

Beforehand, I was asked whether I wanted to make a cake for about 250 people. I agreed. So, I happened to make a 'Theater Haberstedt'-cake. All in all the cake made 233 portions plus lots of cake pops.

photo by Krisz

On the inside the cakes were basically the basic Peggy Porschen cake and butter cream or chocolate ganache. 

The 12cm cakes were lemon cake with apricot jam and lemon butter cream, the 18cm cakes vanilla cake with orange flavoured chocolate ganache and apricot jam and the 24cm and 30cm ones were chocolate cake with vanilla butter cream and jam. 

All in all there were nine 12cm cakes, five 18cm cakes, one 24cm cake, one 30cm cake, five lemon muffins and about 60 cake pops.

With the help of a faux bois structure foil the brown coloured fondant was turned into planks, so that they - hopefully - looked like a cheap stage. Some fondant became figures and masks that are attached to the planks and the muffins were topped with one larger and one smaller cake pop each, so that there were figures on four of the 12cm cakes as well. Each of the figures got a different hairstyle, so that one might compare them to some of the 'real' actors ;)

The rest of the nearly 10 kg of fondant was made into flowers, of which you can see looooads on the cake :)

But enough talking. Here are some pictures. Some more photos will follow when I get them.

Have a look at how creamy the dough looks like. I really loved the texture.

This is the faux bois foil.

A bit of lemon butter cream. 

Four of the small ones. 

Here is the whole cake. 

photo made by Krisz

photo by Krisz

photo by Krisz

photo by Krisz

Plaited yeast bread

Something I like to make for Easter...

You need:

500 g flour
80 g sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
salt
1 egg
1 egg white
250 g single cream
1 sachet dry yeast


1 yolk
1 tbsp. milk


Put flour, sugar, vanilla sugar, salt, egg and egg white into a bowl. Mix dry yeast with the single cream and leave it for some minutes to soak. Then, pour the mixture over the other ingredients and knead until well combined. Leave, covered up, in a warm place for about half an hour. Knead again and divide into four parts, then, form a strand out of each part and make a four-strand braid. Leave in a warm place for half an hour again, then, mix the egg yolk with the milk and spread it on the braid with a baking brush. Bake the yeast bread for about 30 minutes on 180°C.

Green (not velvet) Cheesecake

Imagine it is someone's birthday and the person loves plants and the colour green. Well, she had to get a somehow green cake.

For the sponge you need:

250 g butter (softened)
200 g sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
4 eggs
green food colour (I used about one eggcup)
250 g flour
2 tsp. baking powder

Mix butter, sugar and vanilla sugar until fluffy. Then, add the eggs one by one until well combined. Now, add as much green food colour as you like until the colour is to your liking. The exact amount depends on the quality of the food colour you are using. I had to use quite a lot here because I used food colour from our local super market, but I do own other colours from a pastry store; those yield deeper colours with only several drops of colouring.
Now, mix the flour with the baking powder and add it to the butter-sugar-egg mix. When all is well combined, fill it into a greased round 26cm baking tin and put it into the oven for about 30 minutes on 180°C.

While the cake cools down you can prepare the cheesecake part of the whole thing. All you need is:

100 g sugar
2 eggs
750 g curd cheese
1 sachet custard powder (cream flavour)

Start by mixing sugar and eggs until the mixture gets a light yellow colour. Then, add curd and custard powder until everything is well incorporated.
Grease and flour a 26cm round baking tin and fill in the mixture. Bake for about 45 minutes on 180°C. 
 
While the cakes cool down, you have time to prepare the cream cheese cream.
What you need is:

250 g curd cheese
125 g butter (softened)
100 g sugar
200 g cream cheese (honey flavour; I used 'Brunch - Mona Lisa')

Mix everything until well combined.

When both cakes are at room temperature, cut each of them into two equal slices.

Then, position one green slice on a plate.

Spread a small amount of the cream onto it and top with a slice of cheesecake. Again, spread a small amount of cream onto it. Continue likewise with the remaining slices.

When all the slices are used, cover the whole cake in cheese cream an refrigerate until the cream is set.

Last, you need 200 g single cream and two sachets of 'whip it'. Beat the cream until stiff peak, adding the powder slowly.

Cover the whole cake in whipped cream, decorate to your liking and... ready :)

I decorated the cake with green sugar and small cake pops that I made out of the remaining cream cheese cream and some crumbs from the green cake that I had to cut off to make the two slices even.

Making of: Manesse Cake

Another Larp-event that called for a cake... The Grenzbrueck Reychstag. I wanted to try something new, so I thought about 'painting' a cake. The cake is a basic chocolate cake topped with orange-chocolate ganache and coated with fondant.
The cake is painted with royal icing and food colour pens.

For the chocolate sponge you need

150 g chopped dark chocolate
200 ml milk
400 g sugar
150 g butter at room temperature
4 eggs
300 g flour
3 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda

Pre-heat the oven to 160°C. Put the chocolate, milk and 200 g sugar into a pot and cook until the chocolate is melted. Then, mix butter and remaining sugar in another bowl until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one, then add flour, cocoa, baking powder and baking soda. Mix carefully. Slowly pour in your cooked chocolate mixture and mix again, slowly.
Line a baking tray and fill in the dough and bake for about 30 minutes. Check whether it is done with a toothpick.

While the cake cools down, use the time to prepare the ganache.

250 g dark chocolate (at least 55%)
250 g single cream
grated zest of 1 orange

Chop the chocolate and put it into a bowl together with the orange zest while heating the single cream. When the cream is hot, pour it over the chopped chocolate and stir occasionally until all the chocolate is melted. Let the ganache cool down and set a little. When it is firm enough to be spread upon the cake, position the cake onto a tray and cover the cake with the ganache (top and sides). 


Let the cake rest in the fridge until set (until the cream becomes firm to touch). 

Then, cover the cake with marzipan and fondant.

You need:

800 g marzipan 
250 g  confectioner's sugar (sifted)
800 g fondant
confectioner's sugar for dusting


Knead the confectioner's sugar into the marzipan to make it less sticky to your hands, and the rolling pin, and the table, and... Then, roll it out into a large rectangular shape, hang it carefully over the rolling pin and pull it over the cake.


Now, draw the outlines of your desired motif with food colour pens.

Last thing you do is:


Mix one egg white with about 400 g confectioner's sugar (sifted) and divide into several parts (each about one tablespoon) and stir in some food colour and, if not liquid enough, some drops of milk. 


Now, you can literally paint the cake :)


Have fun!