Tag Archives: cake

Fraisier – strawberry cake

The ”Fraisier” is a French strawberry cake with a sponge base and cream filling. It is light, creamy, and brings a taste of summer. Now it is an excellent time to make this cake! It is important that you use big strawberries, so that you can place them nicely around, building the “wall” of your cake. This fraisier recipe has several steps, but they are all pretty easy. If you have the chance, you can also make much of it in advance. For example, I prepared the sponge cake for my fraisier 2 days in advance.

Le fraisier

Le fraisier

Yield: 12-16 portions

Ingredients: 

Sponge:

  • 1 tea spoon of vanilla extract
  • 120 g caster sugar
  • 100 g wheat flour
  • 50 g butter
  • 4 eggs

Syrup:

  • 150 g sugar
  • 20 cl water
  • 1 tea spoon vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean
  • the zest of half a lemon

Strawberries and decoration:

  • 500 g strawberries
  • Some strawberries and almond paste for decorating the top

Cream filling:

  • 25 cl sweet cream
  • 25 cl semi-skimmed milk
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 40 g cornstarch
  • 50 g sugar
  • 2 gelatin leaves (2g each)
  • 1 vanilla bean or 1 cup vanilla extract

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Medus kūka

The Medus kūka or Honey cake cake is a multi-layered cake with honey as its main ingredient – of course. It also has a creamy filling made from sour-cream between the layers. It is a sweet and delicious treat that goes very well served with an afternoon tea. The honey cake is one of the most popular desserts in Russia as well as the sourrounding countries. In Latvia  you can find both traditional and very modern versions of the cake, which makes it even more attractive. It is one of my favorite childhood sweets and I’m happy that I finally managed to bake it.  I hope that you will enjoy my recipe!

Honey cake

Honey cake

Yield: 12 portions

Ingredients: 

Dough:

  • 300ml honey
  • 100g brown sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • ca. 600g flour – I used whole-wheat flour
  • 120g butter
  • 2 tea spoons baking soda
  • 1 tea spoon apple vinegar

Cream 

  • 700g sour cream
  • 500g light philadelphia cream
  • 2 table spoons honey + some sugar
  • 1 tea spoon vanilla extract

You can add some more sugar to the cream if you prefer a sweeter taste. Since I had used a lot of honey and sugar in the dough, I added less in the cream itself.

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Pavlova with figs

Light Meringue cake with fruits

Pavlova is a meringue cake with a crunchy exterior and a soft interior, which is usually topped with  whipped cream and berries or some fresh fruits. It is soft, light and very delicisous. Pavlova is named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, and got this name after her 1920s tour through Australia. Still, it is unclear where the dessert itself originated from: some argue it comes from New Zealand, others say it is Australin and some even say that it comes from the United States. It is a dessert most identified with the summer time, but is eaten all year round in many Australian and New Zealand homes and has become as well very popular in Europe.

I had wanted to make this cake for a long time, but somehow I was afraid of it being too hard. Now that we have moved homes, I have a new oven and it seems that together “we” can master this elegant and fragile cake very well. I hope that you will enjoy my recipe.

Pavlova with figues

Pavlova with figs

Yield: 5-6 portions

Ingredients: 

Meringue

  • 5 egg-whites
  • 270g powder (caster) sugar (minimum 250g of sugar)
  • 1 table spoon white vinegar
  • 1 table spoon maizena
  • 1 tea spoon vanilla extract

Topping

  • 250ml cream
  • 1 tea spoon vanilla extract
  • 1 table spoon of sugar (if you don’t like your cakes too sweet, you can also skip it)
  • 400g of fresh figs
  • some mint for the decoration

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