For many of us who grew up in the USSR, the Bird's milk cake is associated with childhood and celebration. Even in the years preceding the total deficit, when this dessert appeared on the shelves of the confectionery, a line was built behind it, as to the Mausoleum. Do you know who came up with the bird's milk cake? The recipe was born in the famous Moscow restaurant Prague. A cake of the same name appeared there. But it was precisely on a culinary product called âBird's milkâ that the authors, masters of the confectionery shop under the leadership of chef Vladimir Guralnik, managed to register the first patent in the USSR. Since then, since the beginning of the 80s, a lot of water has flowed. And many complain that the Bird's Milk cake is not the same as before. Stabilizers, emulsifiers and other additives extend the shelf life, and synthetic substitutes for natural products reduce the cost of the product. In this article we will tell you how to make a bird's milk cake at home. We will reveal the secrets of cooking and give tips so that your dessert turns out the way you remember it from childhood.
Recipe in accordance with GOST. Ingredients
If someone else has not tried the Bird's milk cake, letâs explain. It consists of two sand cakes, and between them is placed the most delicate souffle, thanks to which the product got its name. Cake is covered with chocolate icing on top. As you can see, the main difficulty lies in the preparation of this souffle itself. And here the main secret lies in agar-agar. No, you can make a bird's milk cake at home and on gelatin, and even on semolina, but the result will already be a little different. Agar-agar is a thickener of plant origin. The product extracted from seaweed is quite expensive. But for the cake it takes only 4 grams. All other ingredients are pretty typical, often used to make cakes. These are flour, butter, eggs, sugar, condensed milk, citric acid, chocolate and vanilla essence.
Well, let's try to cook a classic cake "Bird's milk" at home?
Step by step recipe. Step # 1: cakes
First of all, a few hours before starting to soak the agar-agar in 140 milliliters of cold water, placing it in a small saucepan. We also get 350 grams of butter from the refrigerator. We need it at room temperature. We measure one hundred grams of butter. Beat this slice with the same amount of sugar. In the reviews, the culinary experts recommend preliminarily crushing the crystals in the coffee grinder. You can also take one hundred grams of powdered sugar. Add two eggs and a few drops of vanilla essence to the sweet oil. Continue to whisk until the mass turns white. Gradually pour 140 grams of sifted flour and knead the dough. To bake a cake "Bird's milk" at home according to the GOST recipe, you need to circle the baking dish with a pencil on baking paper. The resulting circle will be our pattern for cutting cakes. We divide the dough into two halves. We roll out taking into account the required diameter. Bake for ten minutes at 210-230 degrees. Cool without taking it out of shape.
Step number 2: souffle
This is the most difficult step in making Bird Milk cake at home, so you need to take it responsibly. First, beat 200 grams of softened butter with 100 g of condensed milk and a few drops of vanilla essence. Set the cream aside. We put a saucepan with agar-agar on a small fire right in the water in which the thickener was soaked. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Cook for exactly a minute. Pour 350 grams of sugar. We return the saucepan to the stove, but already to the middle flame. Do not stop stirring. Cook the syrup until the filament appears. What does it mean? If you pull the scapula out of the syrup, not a drop will slide off it, but a thin string of caramel will follow. Set aside the saucepan. We take out two eggs from the refrigerator, separate the proteins and begin to beat them. When the foam appears, add half a teaspoon of citric acid. Beat until a dense white âhatâ. When the syrup cools to 80 degrees, add it to the proteins. You need to do this without stopping working as a mixer. Transferring the beaters to a low rotation speed, mix the cream of butter and condensed milk. If you have air mass, the soufflĂ© succeeds.
Step number 3: collect the cake
We will need a detachable mold that matches the diameter of the one in which the cakes were baked. If there is none in the household, we make a stencil from cardboard (you can use the lid on the packaging of some cake). "Bird milk" at home is constructed like this. First, we cover the entire form with cling film, grabbing the sides. We lay one cake on the bottom. Pour half the souffle. Align the back of the knife. We lay the second cake. Fill the remaining souffle. We put the cake in the refrigerator for three to four hours, but better at night. Then the cakes are slightly saturated with souffle moisture, and the taste of the product will be very harmonious.
Step 4: Glaze
It remains to take the last step so that our bird milk cake, prepared at home, becomes the same as it was sold in stores during our childhood. Of course, instead of chocolate icing, you can decorate the cake somehow differently - with mastic, for example. But GOST is harsh. It is said: âchocolate icingâ, which means we will cook it. We put on the fire a wide saucepan with water. We break into pieces of 75-100 grams of dark chocolate without any fillers into a small container. Add 50 g of soft butter. We put this small bowl in hot water in a large pot, but so that it does not come into contact with the fire. You also need to try so that the liquid does not fill our chocolate. This culinary method is called a water bath. And if we add a small amount of fat cream to chocolate with butter, it will turn out not icing, but ganache, which can also cover our culinary masterpiece.
Souffle on gelatin
As you can see, itâs quite possible to make a birdâs cake at home. The recipes are plentiful. But the variations relate mainly to the souffle. Therefore, hereinafter we will not dwell on the preparation of dough and baking cakes. Agar-agar is a rare, and expensive product in our country. So let's see how to cook soufflĂ© - the base of the Bird's Milk cake - on gelatin.
Fill twenty grams of yellow crystals with a little cold water and leave for several hours to swell. Sweet cream butter with a fat content of at least 72 percent and a can of condensed milk should be brought to room temperature. And three egg whites, on the contrary, weâll put in the refrigerator. Beat first 150 grams of butter. The mixer you turn on high speed. Gradually add condensed milk - about a hundred grams. Continue to whisk until the cream becomes homogeneous. Put the swollen gelatin on a slow fire and pour 180 grams of sugar. According to this recipe, you can not bring the mixture to a boil. It will be enough if all sugar crystals dissolve. Remove the saucepan from the stove and begin to whip the whites with citric acid (on the tip of the knife). Gelatin syrup and condensed milk cream are carefully introduced into the egg foam.
Souffle on the semolina
First, knead the dough and bake one cake. Products for this need to be taken, respectively, two times less. Souffle on the semolina for bird milk cake at home is very easy to prepare. From 700 milliliters of milk and six tablespoons of cereal, we cook thick porridge. We shift it into the mixer bowl. Add a glass of regular sugar and a bag of vanilla, as well as 250 grams of softened butter. Whisk. Immediately cook and chocolate icing (or ganache). In a detachable form, covered with cling film, we spread the cake. We put semolina on it. Pour chocolate fudge and immediately hide in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. I must say that âbird milkâ and semolina are like heaven and earth. Such a pie, in spite of its budgeting, loses much to the taste of a real dessert. But as a sweet for everyday tea will do.
Cake souffle "Bird's milk" at home
Would you like to bake a cake separately? And it is not necessary! You can make souffle cake. True, the oven will still have to be heated. But first, beat two eggs and four more yolks (weâll put the whites in the refrigerator for now) with six tablespoons of vanilla sugar. Sift 200 grams of flour into a deep bowl. Mix it with six teaspoons of cookie powder. Loose mass is gradually added to the egg. Carefully kneading everything, pour two cups of 10 percent cream, as well as 2 tbsp. l very soft butter. We take out four squirrels from the refrigerator and beat with a small pinch of citric acid. Gently mix dense foam to the total mass. If you do not have a silicone mold, wrap a regular, metal, seamed baking sleeve. Brush with melted butter or margarine. The oven should already be preheated to 180 degrees. Pour the souffle into the prepared form and bake for about half an hour. The finished cake should also stand in the refrigerator. Only then can it be coated with chocolate icing.
Souffle without eggs
Another interesting recipe for the cake is âBird's milkâ. At home, to prepare such a dessert is affordable even for novice cooks. By the way, this method of preparation is a kind of option for those who are afraid to get salmonellosis. In this souffle we will not use raw eggs. Pour 25 g of gelatin into a saucepan and fill it with a glass (200 ml) of any syrup to your taste. You can also use canned pineapple or peach liquid. Leave for swelling. Then we add another 100 ml of syrup and put the saucepan on a small fire. Knead until the gelatin is completely dissolved, but do not bring to a boil. Now apply the culinary technique âice bathâ. This is almost the same as water, only the liquid in the larger tank should be very cold. Set a saucepan with syrup on top of ice water and beat until white foam. Without turning off the mixer, we introduce 300 ml of concentrated milk, 30 g of sugar and a bag of vanillin. The mass will greatly increase in volume. Immediately pour this foam onto the cooled cake, cover with a second and put in the refrigerator.
Cooking secrets
So you learned the main recipes of the cult Soviet dessert. There are no special secrets here. The main thing is that all the ingredients for soufflé (except for proteins if eggs are used) are at room temperature. And if you have a powerful electric mixer, you are sure to make a delicious Bird's milk cake at home.