CHERRY ME

Happy Monday honeys!

I hope you’re doing well... I’m delighted to tell you that I am back! I’M BACK! And also I’m very happy to come back with these cherry pictures, that make me feel good (I’m not getting any better, I know...). I told myself, preparing this post, that it made me really happy to take pictures of what I was experimenting in my tiny kitchen... Besides, I have to show you the 3 square meters of my kitchen that I’m using as a «laboratory», a tight space, I’d need a very large angle to take a picture of it, I feel like I’m spending my time cleaning this kitchen, anyway... Bottom line, I want to say i’m happy to bake things and to take pictures of them. 

And to say it all, I think that imagining the settings, make my little sets, my little lemonade after all, with my recipes, well it makes my day much more than eating them. 

I think it comes from the fact that I taste the recipe during all its different steps and at the end I’d rather treat (at least I try) the others. Just like with the gifts. I’m completely hysterical and impatient to see my kin discover the presents I made for them. Bottom line is that sharing, and nourishing oneself with beautiful things is a hell of a ‘real’ nourishment... 

I wanted to experiment a new sponge cake recipe, lighter and more ethereal. I found this one in Le Petit Larousse Pâtissier, a good basic just like a good with t-shirt. You’ll need, for two little retractable molds: 

• 140 g of flour, 
• 4 eggs, 
• 140 g of superfine sugar, 
• 40 g of butter.

To start with, find a bowl able to go above a bain-marie. Put the eggs one by one. Little by little pour the sugar, mixing a little bit. Put your bowl above a pan with simmering water and energetically start beating.

Beat until the mixing gets thicker. Then take the bowl out of the bain-marie and keep beating with your electric beater until the mixing gets cooler. 

While the butter is melting, sieve the flour and pour it over your mixing, gently add the lukewarm butter and mix the lot with a spatula. Lift the dough but do not mix too much. Pour the mixing into both molds and bake in your previously heated oven at 180°C for about 25 minutes. But control the baking after 20 minutes with the tip of a knife.

For the decoration and the stuffing, you will need: 

• 15 cl of water, 
• 4 cl of rose sirup, 
• Beautiful morello cherries, strawberries and raspberries, 
• 30 cl of very cold whipped cream, 
• 15 g of powdered sugar, 
• A little bit of pink food coloring (optional).

Once your sponge cake is cooked, cold and out of its molds, take a large knife and cut your first cake in order to have two disks. Start again with your second cake. 

 In a small bowl mix the rose sirup and the water, and with a silicon brush coat the cakes with rose sirup. Save. 

Let’s now get down to firmly whipping up the Chantilly: as soon as the cream gets thicker, add the powdered sugar little by little. Take another mixing bowl and transfer half of your Chantilly into it, then put a few drops of food coloring. 

With your white Chantilly (store the pink one in the fridge in the meantime), you’re going to build your cake, it will be used as a binder - a bit like cement - between the several stratum of your sponge cake. Take your first disk, generously spread the Chantilly and homogeneously add a handful of berries. Put the second disk on top and repeat the operation, you’re «building the stories» of your cake. Try to retain some white Chantilly for the final decoration.

Next step is the «coating» or the «rendering», I’ll let you choose (and yes I’m baking as if I was working in the construction industry, it tones down everything). Take your spatula and coat your whole cake with the colored Chantilly, it has to be very firm. Feel free to add a second layer to get an unvarying frosting. Put the white Chantilly you have left into a pastry bag and make little peaks all around the top of your cake. Add beautiful morello cherries on your white domes and enjoy!