Young housewives often underestimate themselves, believing that they are not given to comprehend the basics of confectionery art, and therefore do not even try to try to “conjure” in their kitchen, cook something sweet, surprise and please the family.
Meanwhile, we just need to remember that everything in this life happens for the first time with each of us, and each person once did not know how to walk, talk, read, write ...
In short, you just need to believe in yourself.
Cakes, too, were once invented and made for the first time, and two and a half thousand years BC, sweet pastry was not even called a cake. The art of home baking is as old as people grow wheat.
It's not about the name: cake or cake, in Italy, in France, in England or in Russia, the tradition of baking products from sweet dough has a thousand-year history. In those distant times, pies and cakes could bake in every home, long before the appearance of the profession of pastry chef.
In a word, imagine that you bake an ordinary cake from any sweet dough, because the Russian word “pie”, unlike the Italian word “cake”, is more familiar and understandable, and in fact the cooking technology is one and the same. A variety of types of dough, toppings or creams, ways to design, of course, there are many, but the basics of confectionery techniques and methods for making cakes and any other sweet dough confectionery are easy to analyze and classify. Knowing the properties of the main products that make up the cakes, their interaction and ability to change with different methods of heat or mechanical processing, you can easily realize your own pastry idea - to create a cake with the most favorite foods and delicacies, and even create competition for professional pastry chefs.
Cake with raisins, nuts and poppy seeds - the basic technological principles
It is also called bulk. The basis is whipped egg mass. During mechanical action (beating) between molecules of egg protein, which is transformed in the process of beating into protein fibers interconnected, air bubbles accumulate. The longer and more intense the beating, the more elastic the egg mass becomes, and the more air bubbles accumulate in it. Adding flour containing gluten adds stability to the egg mass. Flour absorbs some of the moisture from the eggs, also forming gluten fibers and tying the dough. But the flour is heavier, so its excess can precipitate the dough, squeezing out air bubbles with its weight. To reduce the density of flour and saturate it with air, professionals strongly recommend that you always sift the flour before putting it into the dough. Under the influence of hot air, the proteins of the dough are connected to a stable structure, preventing the exit of air bubbles that remain between the layers of fibers. When baking the biscuit, some of the moisture also evaporates, the dough acquires a dense texture. Everything, biscuit is ready. Where is the sugar? Of course, sugar is also added, and flavors, and butter, and raisins, nuts, candied fruits - anything you want. But the main thing to remember is: the base of the biscuit is eggs and flour. By the way, eggs should be only fresh and chilled. Proteins and yolks are better whipped separately.
Then they are connected, but using a spatula or spoon, and not a mixer. Flour must also be injected, gently mixing it with the egg mass in small portions, scattering it over the surface of the egg mass so that no lumps form. Try not to have too much flour: the lightness, fluffiness and humidity of the finished biscuit depend on it. Remember that flour is necessary only for the stability of the structure of egg protein fibers.
Now about the sugar. The ideal option for biscuit dough, of course, is not crystalline sugar, but powder, consisting of smaller and lighter particles that will not “traumatize” the dough and connect with it faster. The amount of sugar in the sponge cake affects only the taste of the dough. Many people think that there should be a lot of sugar in biscuit dough, and that it “helps” to make the protein mass airy. It's a delusion. For a biscuit to turn out sweet, 20 g of sugar or powder per egg is enough, the weight of which is on average 40-50 g. That is, the ratio is 1: 2. Let us return to the eggs: they are more than 80% water. In order to provide approximately the same ratio of dry and wet ingredients of the bulk dough, combine the powder with flour in equal amounts. If we are talking about chocolate sponge cake, then part of the flour needs to be replaced with cocoa powder.
All the additional ingredients for biscuit cakes are prepared and added first to the flour, and then together with the flour - to the egg mass. Nuts are pre-fried and crushed, poppy seeds, raisins or other dried fruits are washed, steamed and always dried. Making a cream and decorating a cake is a separate topic, and this is in many ways a creative process depending on the confectioner's fancy.
Recipe 1. Cake with raisins and nuts “The Fairy Tale of Scheherezada”
Ingredients for chocolate raisin sponge cake:
Vanilla 5g
“Amaretto” (for impregnation) 50 ml
Sugar (including syrup) 130 g
Or 80 g of powder and 50 g of sugar
Flour 120g
Water 40 ml
Eggs 4 pcs. (160g)
Raisin 70 g
Cocoa 20 g
Boiled condensed milk 150 g
Almond chips 100 g
Oil 82.5% 90 g
White chocolate crumb 100 g
Caramel “Mint”
Decor: flowers, butterflies, colored mastic topping
Cooking:
For the preparation of biscuit dough will need eggs, cocoa, flour, vanilla, 80 g of sugar or powder and raisins. Turn on the oven. The temperature for baking biscuits is 180ºC. Prepare a detachable form. Combine the flour with sifted cocoa, powdered sugar and vanilla. Add to the dry mixture washed, steamed in boiling water and dried raisins. Add the dry mix to the beaten egg mass, as described above in the basic technological principles. After baking, do not rush to get the biscuit out of the mold. When it cools completely, cut into three layers.
Prepare a syrup for impregnation from “Amaretto”, 40 ml of water and the remaining sugar. In hot water, dissolve sugar, cool slightly and mix with liqueur. Sprinkle the cut cakes.
Combine the softened butter with condensed milk, whisk, adding vanilla. In the prepared cream, pour the almonds and mix. Assemble the cake, greasing each layer of cooked cream. Smear the side of the cake with the same cream and sprinkle it with white chocolate chips mixed with almonds.
For decoration, melt caramel in a water bath. Take a small round-shaped balloon, inflate it and pour melted candies in a thin trickle on the surface of the balloon. When the caramel hardens again, blow the air out of the bowl and carefully separate the caramel net, which should solidify as a hemisphere. Place the caramel decor on the surface of the cake. Dampering caramel with water, attach butterflies and sugar mastic flowers to it. Sprinkle the cake with colored sugar.
Recipe 2. Cake with raisins, nuts and poppy seeds “Pharaoh's Mystery” without baking
Ingredients:
Shortbread (square) 900 g
Eggs 4 yolks and 2 whole eggs
Sugar 200 g
250 g oil
Flour 75 g
Vanilla 5g
Milk 300 ml
Cashews, roasted (crumb) 150 g
Fig jam 100 g
Mac 50 g
Raisin 120g
Cooking:
Prepare custard: combine sugar, flour. Beat the eggs, add milk to them, and then dry the mixture. After mixing the mixture until a homogeneous consistency, cook over low heat until thick and with continuous stirring. When cool, add butter and vanilla. Beat gradually increasing the speed until thick. Also add poppy and nut crumb to the cooked cream.
From the cookies on a platter, place a square, in a single layer. Brush it with custard. Stepping back from the edge of 1.5-2 cm, lay out the next layer of cookies, also in the form of a square. Put berries on it from fig jam, combined with raisins. Each next square layer must be less than the previous one, so that the cake will be shaped as a pyramid. Each side of the pyramid grease the remaining custard, smooth the surface and apply a geometric pattern.
Soak the cake in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours.
Recipe 3. Cake with raisins and nuts “Meteorite”
Ingredients:
Flour 140 g
Oil 82.5% 160 g
Starch, potato 20 g
Eggs 4 pcs.
Essence, vanilla 5-6 drops
Chocolate, black 200 g
Raisin 100 g
Rum 10 ml
Walnuts (kernels) 160 g (net)
Cooking:
Combine flour with starch. Pound butter with sugar, add vanilla essence and rum, whip whites and yolks. Combine proteins with yolks, then - butter, mix and add flour with starch. Bake the butter biscuit as the main one. When cool, chop randomly into slices.
Melt the chocolate and, when slightly cooled, combine it with butter to a uniform consistency.
Take a spherical container and lay it in layers of slices of baked biscuit, crushed nuts, raisins. Smudge each layer of chocolate cream. Having kept the semi-finished product in the cold before solidification, remove the container from the refrigerator and turn it over to a round dish. Grease the surface of the cake with cream, pour with melted chocolate and sprinkle with chopped nuts.
Recipe 4. Cake with raisins, nuts and poppy “Vesuvius”
Ingredients:
For cake layers:
White and chocolate sponge cake (recipe number 1)
Juice, pomegranate 300 ml
Raisin, dark 150 g
Mack, confectionery 100 g
Sugar for marmalade 150 g
Agar Agar 5 g
Blackcurrant liqueur 50 ml
Chocolate chips 250 g
Almond flakes or nuts 120 g
Cooking:
Take a round shape for biscuit, with a diameter of 24 -26 cm, and a shape for a large cake, the same diameter. Prepare white dough for biscuit, taking the ingredients for the recipe number 1, but replacing the cocoa flour and bake in a round shape. Cook the second one, chocolate biscuit exactly as indicated in the same recipe and bake it in a cake pan, with a notch in the center.
Put the finished, cooled biscuits on the dish: white cake - down, and on top of it - chocolate biscuit with a hole in the center.
Bring pomegranate juice to a boil, dissolve sugar in it and add agar-agar, prepared raisins and poppy seeds, Boil for 5-7 minutes and turn off. When the juice has cooled to 40ºC, pour in the liqueur. Begin to freeze the marmalade mass into the hole in the center of the biscuit. Lubricate the surface of the cake with the same mass, sprinkling with chocolate chips, nuts and poppy seeds. Make liquid paths of liquid marmalade, imitating red-hot lava flowing to the foot of the volcano.
Recipe 5. Cake with raisins and nuts “Favorite”
Ingredients:
Eggs 3 pcs.
Flour 400 g
Sugar 100 g
Roasted Peanuts
Butter
Soda 5 g
Lemon juice 25 ml
Sour cream 15% 300 g
Whipped cream 250 g
Strawberry 400 g
Cooking:
Prepare the dough from sour cream, flour, eggs and sugar as for a muffin, adding soda, quenched with lemon juice, at the end of the kneading. Bake cakes in a pan, pouring 0.5 cm thick dough into it. Combine the cooled cakes, smearing each with whipped cream and shifting the layers into slices of roasted peanuts and strawberries. Clean the cake in the fridge overnight so that the cakes are soaked.
Cake with raisins, nuts and poppy seeds - tricks and tips
- So that the biscuit dough does not settle after it is saturated with air using whipping, it is immediately baked. The temperature is average. When baking in any case, you can not open the oven to watch. You can not shake or even accidentally push the form with the biscuit dough: if the air comes out - you get a hard, dry and thin pancake.
- When beating eggs for biscuit dough, put them only in dry, non-greasy dishes. It is even better if the bowl for beating eggs is metallic, made of stainless steel, and before beating the eggs, it will cool down well in the freezer.
