“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward”
Kurt Vonnegut
Summary: A light almond flavoured sponge sandwiched and frosted with an equally light almond whipped buttercream. Inspired from here. Serves 8
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes
Ingredients:
- Sponge X 2 {to make 4 round cakes. Each portion makes 2 X 7″ cakes}
- 4 eggs
- 110g raw sugar {or powdered}
- 1 vanilla bean, scraped
- 4 drops almond extract
- 80g plain flour
- 25g almond meal
- 1tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tsp light olive oil
- Pink colour
- Filling and frosting
- 100g unsalted butter, room temperature
- 400g low fat cream, chilled
- 150-200g icing sugar {adjust according to taste}
- Few drops almond extract
Method:
- Sponge {each portion of batter makes 2 cakes}
- Line the bottoms and sides of 2 7″ round tin. Preheat oven to 180C.
- Sift the flour, almond meal, baking powder and salt together. Reserve.
- Beat the eggs and sugar over simmering water on high speed for about 10 minutes until the mixtures becomes thick and mousse like, tripling in quantity {Thermomix, Speed 4, Butterfly insert, 37C, 10 minutes or more}
- Take off water, add vanilla bean almond extract and continue beating for 3-4 minutes until it cools down a bit. {Thermomix, Speed 4, Butterfly insert, 3-4 minutes}
- Gently fold in the flour mixture in 3-4 goes. {Thermomix, Reverse Speed 2}, followed by the olive oil.
- Divide batter into two {approximately 200-210g per portion}.
- Pour one plain white portion into tin nbr 1. Add 2 drops of pink to the next. Repeat for another portion of batter but increase the amount of pink in the next two. You could use a drop of purple additionally in the 4th portion to get a darker hue.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes until the sponge springs back when touched lightly, or a tester comes out clean. {Don’t overbake els the sponges will get dry}
- Cool on rack for 5 minutes, remove from tin and cool completely.
- Filling and frosting
- Whip the cream and sugar to medium peaks. Add the butter and almond extract and whip until light and fluffy. {You cannot pipe roses with this}
- Sandwich the layers with this, then frost the top and sides with remaining cream. Pipe rosettes on top if desired.
- Chill for 2-3 hours for flavours to mature.
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Also find me on The Rabid Baker, The Times of India