By Tessa van Hoorn
Staff Writer
I always get suspicious when someone tells me they don’t like cake. There are so many different types of cake, or otherwise sweet pastries, that there must be something to like for everyone. If you don’t like cake, you just didn’t find the right one yet! Honestly, what better way to celebrate a special occasion than to eat some gorgeous looking, sweet deliciousness?
To give some inspiration, here come the birthday cakes!
First up: the good-looking, versatile, chocolaty-not-too-chocolaty Red Velvet cake!
There are many, many different recipes to make this cake. This is a problem, because it is hard to choose the right one. Even more of a problem: something has always gone wrong when I made this cake…
On a more positive note: it looks beautiful and tastes amazing, even if something did not go as planned (always keep in mind the very true words of British cook Nigella Lawson: never apologize!)
After trying a few different recipes, I found this one to work best:
There are some seemingly strange ingredients in all Red Velvet cakes (Buttermilk? Vinegar?!), but trust me, it works! The only thing I usually do not agree with is the topping. Cream cheese topping is the original one, but I am simply not a fan of cream cheese. You can make it into a white chocolate cream cheese filling, which is already a bit better by adding 400g of melted white chocolate (leave it to cool down a bit!) Another great filling/topping would be butter cream. It is usually quite thick, so it is easy to work with when you want to decorate.
This is the recipe for a basic vanilla butter cream, you can add melted chocolate, orange, anything you like basically!
115g of unsalted butter, at room temperature
60ml semi-skimmed milk
1tbs good-quality vanilla extract
500g icing sugar, sifted
(This would be enough for 12 cupcakes, so if you want to make the 23cm Ø cakes I would double the amount)
Using an electric hand mixer beat the butter, milk, vanilla extract and half the icing sugar in a bowl until smooth. Gradually add the remainder of the icing sugar.
The next one is for those of you with a real sweet tooth: Chocolate Banoffee Pie!
Ok so I love this, it makes me happy beyond rainbows and unicorns, and it will probably take any other true sugar addicts to that place too. Ideally you make this in smaller cake forms, but you can also make it in a bigger normal cake form. Oh and to all boyfriends: it is also very easy to make, so if you ever feel like treating your partner…
Ingredients (for 6 cake forms of 10 Ø, or probably around one shape of 23 Ø) :
250g of cookies with chocolate (chocolate chip cookies are nicest, but you can use other ones as well)
180g unsalted butter
100g brown caster sugar
1 can of sweet condensed milk (395g (you can get this at the Albert Heijn, near the coconut milk))
75g dark chocolate, melted
1tbs golden syrup
300ml double cream
2 bananas
Cocoa powder
Crumble the cookies, be creative and let out your frustration! (DO NOT use a blender though… trust me). Melt 80g of the butter and mix through the cookie crumbles. Divide this mixture over the baking tin in a thin layer (bottom and sides, between 2/3cm up). Let it set for 20 minutes in the fridge.
Heat the sugar with the remainder of the butter in a pan (low heat) until the butter is melted. Add the condensed milk and heat for about 5min (or until the mixture caramelised). It will be think and golden. Take the pan of the heat, add the chocolate and the golden syrup and mix well. Divide the mixture over the cake shapes (or, if you make one big cake, pour it in the big shape). Leave this in the fridge for at least 2 hours. TIP: you can also put some banana on the bottom already, to get some extra banana flavour.
Beat the double cream into soft peaks and cut the bananas in pieces. Put the banana on the cake(s), distribute the whipped cream and sprinkle some cocoa powder over it.
And last but not least: the fruity -WOW- factor Charlotte.
So, this is also an easy cake, and boy doesn’t it look gorgeous!
Ingredients:
4 sheets of gelatine (you can buy this at AH)
250g raspberries
250ml double cream
3tbs sugar
250g Greek yoghurt
350g ladyfingers (‘lange vingers’)
Powdered sugar
Soften the gelatine for 5 min in cold water. In the meanwhile, mash half of the raspberries with a fork. Put 2tbs of the mashed raspberries into a pan and leave until it almost boils. Drain the gelatine and dissolve into the warm raspberry mash. Beat the double cream with 3tbs of sugar until stiff. Add the Greek yoghurt and all the mashed raspberries to the mixture and gently fold in.
Cover the bottom of a 14cmØ baking tin. Put the mixture in and leave in the fridge for three hours. (Another method is to put the mixture in a pan of 14cmØ, then top it with the ladyfingers. After you left it in the fridge, you put the pan upside down on top of a plate and let the cake come out). When the cake is out of the fridge, you stick the rest of the ladyfingers on the sides of the cake (see picture). Tie a nice ribbon around it, top it with raspberries and sprinkle with powdered sugar.
These are three different, but delicious birthday cakes (which you can actually eat any day, there is a celebration for everything!) There are of course many other possibilties, in the end it comes down to one thing: more cake is always better.
Tessa van Hoorn, class of 2015, is a Social Science major from Haaften, The Netherlands.
