Home-made fruit cake is a real pleasure for all family members. However, not every hostess seeks to please her household with such a treat. Often, women think that making a cake is not an easy task. In fact, there are no particular difficulties in this. Only the products necessary for baking a cake, time and patience are required.
A simple and tasty fruit layer treat: ingredients
A cake is not always a delicacy in cooking. The recipe, which is presented below, is quite simple. The fruit layer in it is designated ordinary jam. You can take the jam. By the way, in Soviet cakes, fruit layer always meant jam or jam.
To make a cake, you will need ingredients for biscuit, syrup, protein custard, toppings and decorations. Products and their quantity are indicated in the table below.
Ingredients for Making Fruit Cake| For biscuit | For syrup | For Protein Custard | For toppings and decorations |
eggs - 4 pieces; sugar - 110 g; flour - 100 g; starch - 20 g; rum essence - 1 ml; butter - 1 piece. | sugar - 80 g; water - 70 ml; cognac - 10 ml; rum essence - 1 ml. | sugar - 180 g; water - 55 ml; chilled egg whites - 2 or 3 pieces; powdered sugar - 6 g. | apricot jam or jam - 250 g; icing sugar - 20 g; canned apricots - 25 g. |
Making biscuit
If you plan to make a cake with a fruit layer, then first remove the eggs from the refrigerator. They should be at room temperature. When the eggs lie a little in the kitchen, break them and mix with sugar. Beat this mixture with a mixer. Start at a low speed. Gradually increase it to maximum. Beat the eggs for 10 minutes. As a result, your mixture will increase by 2 or 3 times.
Take a clean and dry cup. Mix flour and starch in it, sift and add to the sugar-egg mixture. Pour in the rum essence to give the biscuit a special flavor. Stir the dough. Lubricate the biscuit baking dish with butter and sprinkle just a little flour. Pour the dough, preheat the oven to 190-200 degrees. Bake for 40 minutes. After cooking, put the biscuit on the wire rack. It should cool down and stand for about 9 hours. Then clean the biscuit with a grater. Crumbs will come in handy for finishing the sides of the cake.
Syrup and Protein Custard
A very important component of a simple fruit cake is syrup. It is used to impregnate a biscuit. Preparing syrup is very simple. Pour sugar into water. Place the container on the stove and bring to a boil. Remember to constantly stir and remove the foam that forms on the surface of the water. After boiling, boil the syrup for about a couple of minutes. Then remove from heat. Set the syrup on the desktop aside. Cool it to 20 degrees, strain and add cognac with rum essence. The syrup is ready.
You just have to make a protein custard. With proper preparation, it turns snow-white, tasty and quite thick. Combine water with sugar, put on fire. In the meantime, prepare the squirrels. Beat them with a mixer (first at low speed, and then at high). Pour the icing sugar into the cream. Check water with sugar. It should boil and warm up to 120 degrees. Ready syrup immediately after removing from the stove pour a thin stream into proteins. Whisk quickly. Continue to do this for 5 minutes. Then it remains only to collect a treat from the resulting components.
Cake assembly
Cut the biscuit into 3 cakes. Soak them in syrup. Take apricot jam to lubricate the biscuit. Preheat it a little in the microwave so that its consistency is more fluid and easy to apply. After lubricating the biscuit surfaces, connect the cakes.
On the top surface of a homemade fruit cake, you need to apply a protein custard. To do this, take a pastry bag without a nozzle. Lubricate the sides of the cake with cream (you can also sprinkle them with biscuit crumbs). Garnish the cream with canned apricots. Sprinkle with powdered sugar on top.
Cake decorated with fruits and berries: preparation of products
In order to make a fruit treat, it is not necessary to come up with an unusual cream with the right ingredients. You can make a simple cake and decorate it with fruits and berries. This option will appeal to family members. The fruit and berry top layer will give the cake a special taste and will serve as its highlight.
If you are interested in this option, prepare products for making biscuit. You will need:
- eggs - 5 pieces;
- sugar - 225 g;
- flour - 125 g;
- cocoa powder - 1 tablespoon;
- water - 100 ml.
For the filling, prepare the finished custard (200 g). You will also need whipped cream with 33% fat (200 g) and Cointreau liqueur (somewhere around 10 g). To decorate a fruit cake, take 1 kiwi, 2 canned peaches, a few rings of canned pineapples, a small amount of fresh strawberries, about 70 g of fried almond petals and a little apricot jam.
Sponge cake baking and cream preparation
Beat all eggs and only 125 g of sugar with a mixer. When the mass becomes lush, put in it previously sifted through a sieve of cocoa and flour and mix. Prepare a biscuit baking dish. Pour the resulting dough into it. Bake for about half an hour at a temperature of 180 degrees. After making the biscuit, cool it and cut it into 3 layers. Make sugar syrup from the remaining sugar and water. Soak them cakes.
Set the finished biscuit to one side. At the next stage, you will make the filling. Stir 3 ingredients that are needed to make it - custard, cream and liquor. With the resulting mixture, coat the cakes, the top of the cake and its sides. Sprinkle the treat with fried almond petals. Put pieces of fruit and berries on top. Preheat apricot jam. Grease them with fruits and berries. Chill the finished cake before serving.
Children's fruit cake: the first step in cooking
Children love everything unusual, therefore, in the preparation of delicacies for them it is worth trying especially. There are a lot of options for children's cakes. One of them is called Little Cat. The cake has an unusual shape, but it does not complicate the cooking process too much.
It all starts with baking a biscuit. You will need:
- eggs - 8 pieces;
- sugar - 250 g;
- flour - 200 g.
Break the eggs and separate the whites from the yolks. Beat the whites with a mixer to “strong peaks” (to such a consistency, at which pointy foam will remain on the whisk). Pour sugar in several portions. Do not stop the whipping process. Next, start adding yolks to the mixture (1–2 pieces). With the introduction of this ingredient, you can stop the mixer. Just mix the mixture after each addition of yolks.
Pour the sifted flour in portions. Stir the mixture and turn on the mixer at a slow speed. Turn off after a few minutes. You will get a thick and uniform dough, reminiscent of sour cream in consistency. Pour it into a paper-lined mold and cook in the oven.
Second stage of cooking
The next step in making a delicious fruit cake is making cream and preparing the fruit. Essential Ingredients:
- sour cream 25% fat - 200 ml;
- sugar - 100 g;
- curd mass - 600 g;
- butter - 100 g.
Beat sour cream with sugar. Add the curd mass, butter. Continue to beat until a uniform consistency is formed. More in the preparation of the cream you do not need anything. After whipping, it will be ready to use. When you make the cream, start slicing the fruit. Choose a combination that your child loves - for example, apple, pear and kiwi. Be sure to consider the age of the baby, allergic reactions.
The third stage: the assembly of baby cake
On plain plain paper, draw the shape of the future fruit cake and cut it out. This will be your pattern. Attach it to the biscuit and cut the edges, but do not cut the kitten completely. You will do it later. Cut the biscuit into 3 cakes. Make sugar syrup from sugar and water. Soak them a biscuit.
Smear the bottom cake with cream and sprinkle with fruit. Put on top the second piece of biscuit. Lubricate it with cream and sprinkle with pieces of fruit. Cover this layer with the third cake. Next, attach the pattern and cut out the kitty. Put the cake in the refrigerator to cool and soak.
The final stage: decoration of goodies
How to decorate a fruit cake for a child? To do this, you will need pink, black, yellow, red and white mastic. Roll out the red mastic in the form of an oval. Cut a long rectangle. Assemble the middle and opposite sides into an accordion. Fold the edges and glue them in the middle. You will get a bow. Cut another small rectangle. Wrap them in the middle. To make it convenient for you to work with a bow, put a cut and crumpled plastic bag in the right and left halves.
Roll out a large layer of white mastic. Cover them with the finished cake. Flatten, remove excess mastic and creases. Attach the finished bow in the eye area. Make a nose out of yellow mastic, eyes and tendrils from black, and a dress and slippers from pink. This completes the preparation of the baby cake.
Tips for hostesses
You can decorate any cake to your liking. It is very convenient to use mastic. It is naturally edible and safe. They sell it in online stores, pastry departments. From mastic, you can make various figures, flowers to decorate the cake. If you need to write something on a treat, order more food-grade paint.
If there is no mastic, then decorate the top of the cake with fruits and berries. A very tasty treat looks in the presence of jelly on top. Here is a tip:
- Put sliced fruit on a treat.
- Make jelly for fruit cake. Soak 4 g of agar-agar in 420 ml of cold water. Put the liquid on the fire a little later. Heat it until the agar agar is completely dissolved. Pour 420 g of sugar. Boil the liquid until it dissolves for about 5 minutes. Turn off the stove. Strain the syrup and add 3 ml of aromatic essence, 2 g of citric acid and a pinch of any dye. Chill.
- Lubricate the fruit with jelly. It should completely cover them and eventually freeze. You will get an unusual jelly top coat.
Making a fruit cake with biscuit baking is a creative activity. Think over your options for goodies and decorations, experiment with ready-made recipes and introduce something new into them. Thanks to searches, you get truly delicious cakes that are not ashamed to treat your family members and guests.