How to make a cake with jelly on top?

Multilayer cakes with a gelatin layer on top always attract more attention than their relatives with cream or other types of decoration. It seems to many that such desserts are very difficult to prepare and have a rather laborious preparation process. It’s actually very easy to make jelly on the cake on top. How to do this at home from the available products, this article will tell.

Types of cakes

There are several options for cakes with jelly on top:

1. The basis of the dough, then a layer of cream or soufflé, and on top of it directly the jelly layer itself. The disadvantage of this cake is that it is quite high-calorie and takes a long time to prepare (considering all layers). A significant plus is its stunning appearance and taste.
2. A cake without baking, which is based on a layer of crushed cookies mixed with butter or condensed milk or dried fruit. Such a dessert may also have a layer of cottage cheese, yogurt or cream, which is crowned with a layer of jelly.
3. Fruit cake or, as restaurant workers call it, a “seasonal cake”. The basis of such a dessert is often made from shortcrust pastry, and it is rather thin, and the whole space inside is occupied by whole fruits and berries or their pieces, which are poured on top with a gelling mass. Sometimes it is a thick layer (at least 4 cm), and sometimes fruits are simply covered with a thick jelly with a brush so that they have an attractive appearance and are easier to carry.

On a biscuit basis

The basic recipe for a cake with jelly on top looks like this:

• To begin with, a biscuit base of six eggs is baked. To do this, beat eggs with 1 cup of sugar until an increase in volume of at least 3 times.
• The mass should become almost white, lush and dense.
• At this point, the oven should already be warmed up to 200 ° C, and the baking dish is lined with parchment, slightly oiled.
• Next, add 1 cup of flour to the egg mass with a spoon, moving the spoon in one direction from the bottom up (this is very important if you do not want the biscuit to turn into a lifeless cake).

• Pour the dough into the prepared form and send it to the oven.
• Bake for at least 40 minutes without opening the oven door for the first half hour, so that the dough does not settle.
• When the biscuit is ready, let it cool in shape, then remove it and cut the base into 2 layers along using a sharp knife.
• Then saturate the layer with cream, fold one on top of the other, and cover the top with a small layer of cream (not more than 1 cm) to level the surface, bringing it to perfect. In the future, jelly on it will look flawless.
• Chill the cake in the refrigerator to make the cream firm.

Several important aspects

Many ignorant people who tried to make a biscuit cake with jelly on top, failed only because they did not know some of the nuances of cooking. The most common situation: jelly dripped from the cake with cream, and if there was no cream at all (there were such attempts), then the top layer was simply absorbed into a biscuit, turning it into something unintelligible.

Also, many fruit jellies did not freeze at all, although the proportions of preparation were maintained correctly. What are the mistakes?

1. Most important: the jelly at the time of pouring should be absolutely chilled to such a state that the first signs of thickening, that is, gelation, appear.
2. It is also important to use a thick cream, preferably on an oil or cream basis. Custard, as well as from whipped cream, do not combine with jelly at all, as they have a too watery structure, which, in combination with the jelly mass that has not yet hardened, becomes more liquid and drains from the cake.
3. And one more thing: if fruits are planned in jelly on top of the cake, then these should not be pineapples and kiwi - they are incompatible with gelatin, since their properties neutralize with their enzymes. Therefore, if you want to make jelly with fruits inside, you need to choose other options, or use canned ones. Heat-treated fruits lose enzymes.

Cooking cream

For this reason, those who have never cooked such desserts should start with a simpler option, for example, with a cherry jelly cake. From above it will be possible to decorate it with whole berries, if desired, covering them with a thin layer of sweet mass.

So, for a biscuit of six eggs, you can prepare a cream of whipped sour cream with sugar, in a 3: 1 ratio, adding a little vanillin to them for a better flavor. The mass is whipped to a lush, stable foam, but it is important not to overdo it, otherwise sour cream may turn into oil. When the cream begins to thicken, you need to carefully monitor and slow down the mixer.

Next, the layers of biscuit are smeared with the cream obtained, as well as the upper part, which should be smoothly smoothed with a knife. Place the cake in the cold for at least an hour to make the cream harder, then the jelly on it will be more stable and solidify faster.

Pour jelly

To make cherry jelly, you need to take:

• 2 tbsp. cherry juice;
• 4-6 tbsp. l sugar (depending on taste preferences);
• 25 g of gelatin and 150 g of cold water to dilute it.

Allow the gelatin to swell, and then dilute it in cherry juice, add sugar there and heat until completely dissolved. In no case do not allow the liquid to boil, otherwise the gelatin will lose its properties. After which it should be cooled to a state, and when there are signs of thickening and pour jelly on top of the biscuit cake.

How to pour jelly on a cake?

Probably, every beginning confectioner had such a mistake: jelly, when trying to pour it into a detachable form (for further convenient extraction of the cake), poured through the connection of the walls or did not find a suitable shape at all. How to avoid this?

1. If there is no suitable size for pouring jelly, then you can use the usual wide bowl, which is slightly larger in diameter than the base biscuit. Line it with cling film, pour jelly, let it completely harden, and then remove it, place the biscuit base on top, and cut off the excess edges with a knife slightly heated over a fire.
2. If a suitable detachable form is available, but it is not high enough for pouring jelly, then its height can always be increased with foil or oiled baking paper, which must be folded several times to give a higher density (because they must withstand the pressure of the gelatinous mass).
3. How to make a cake with jelly on top, if the connector in the form passes fluid? The solution is the same: a thick ring of oiled paper that will cover the biscuit layer and rise above the edge of the mold. The dense structure of the paper form is important, therefore it is worth scrupulously treating the process of preparing this ring. And do not forget that jelly is poured already in the first stage of solidification.

Cake without baking

For those who do not like to mess around in the kitchen for a long time, and even bake something, the cake recipe (with photo) with jelly on top, but without baking and with a minimal base of dough, will be to your taste. It is especially pleasant that such desserts are less high-calorie than their biscuit counterparts, and they are also easier to digest.

For cooking, you need the following ingredients:

• 300 g simple cookies;
• 150 g of butter and as much cottage cheese;
• 700 g of sour cream or heavy cream;
• 180 g of granulated sugar;
• two bags of jelly;
• 55 g of gelatin;
• vanilla;

Fruits are added based on the color of jelly: lime - if the jelly is green or yellow, orange - if orange, strawberries - if red.

Cooking

1. Grind cookies into crumbs and mix with butter. If the mass is not plastic enough, then you can add a couple of spoons of condensed milk or cream.
2. At the bottom of the split mold, lay out the resulting mass in the form of an even layer, firmly pressing it in with your hands, and then send it to the refrigerator.
3. Dilute gelatin in a glass of cold water, and when it swells, heat in a steam bath until dissolved.
4. Grind the cottage cheese with sugar and vanilla using a blender to a creamy mass. It is important that there are absolutely no small curd grains (therefore, some chefs recommend rubbing the curd through a sieve).
5. Add sour cream and beat a little more and, stirring continuously, pour in gelatin. Quickly grind and pour on the base of the cookies.
6. The mass will harden quickly, so you need to act quickly so that the top layer is even.

Since the cake was planned with jelly on top, then you need to prepare the top layer:

• In a small saucepan, dilute the contents of the jelly sachets in 600 grams of water and heat a little to dissolve well.
• Place the mass in a cool place and, stirring occasionally, check its condition: when the mass begins to slightly thicken, it is time to fill the top.

Fruit in jelly on a cake

The most crucial moment remained: how to pour jelly on the cake from above so that the fruits were beautifully laid inside?

One of the main rules: do not make the jelly layer too thick, then when pouring the fruits will not pop up in an arbitrary order, which sometimes happens when the top layer is large.

So, the chilled jelly for the top layer has already begun to show signs of gelation, so it's time to cut the fruit:

• If the cake is with an orange or lime layer, we cut them into circles with a thickness of 5 mm along with the skin. It is important to use a really sharp knife so that the slicing is beautiful and even.
• We spread them with a picturesque pattern on the curd layer of the cake, which is already well frozen (it is better to make sure and try your finger for elasticity).
• Then carefully pour the jelly on top in small portions so that the fruit pattern is not broken. At the same time, it is worthwhile to ensure that the level of the orange layer is not much higher than the fruits themselves.
• Immediately return it back to the refrigerator until the top layer has completely solidified, and when serving, decorate with several leaves of mint or large chocolate chips.

If strawberries are used for the cake

When half a portion of the prepared jelly is poured onto the cake, we lay out the whole berries, the sharp part up, placing them tightly to each other. It is worth noting that berries should be picked in advance so that they are intact and of the same size.

When all the berries are laid out in a row - put the cake in the cold for 10 -15 minutes to make this layer more elastic and fix them. It is important not to let it freeze completely, otherwise the uniformity of the top layer will be lost. This does not affect the taste, but aesthetics are also important.

Then pour the jelly leftovers, which at that time were in a warm place (so that it did not freeze ahead of time) on top of the cake and again return it to a cool place, already before the layer completely solidified.