Cream Cakes

It was my last dinner at Grandma’s this week, as on Sunday, in a whirlwind of books, bags and baking equipment, I return to university.  I wanted to go out with a flourish, but I couldn’t think what to make.  For days I wavered between an enormous mouth-watering chocolate cake, strawberries and cream pie and a brownie with a layer of cheesecake topped with some kind of yummy raspberry goo.  Sitting in Tom’s kitchen with a mountain of his mum’s recipe books, it came to me: Cream Cakes.  The kind of cakes coated in chocolate which ooze cream in a way that say ‘You know you can’t resist...’  And for this I would need to apply my deeply amateur hand to the dreaded Choux Pastry.

 

I decided to make two batches of these, as the recipe only served eight to ten.  Also this meant I got two chances to get it right.  I put the latest episode of The Great British Bake Off on in the background for a bit of moral support; the remaining fabulous baker girls were each creating a breath-taking croquembouche.  It might have worked because the first batch of pastry turned out to be a surprising success.  My little cakes rose; they were brown, but not burnt; they were not too dry or too wet on the inside; they didn’t sink when I cut into them.  The second batch, it has to be said, were less enthusiastic risers.  They tried valiantly but remained disappointingly flat.  I think the curse of the Spreading, so often seen in my cookies, had struck again because they were suspiciously wide.  Overall, the pastry actually worked.

The delight of success did not last very long, however, as next came the Great Cream Catastrophe.  I was using quite an old recipe which demanded a filling made of double cream, egg whites and sugar.  I had never whipped egg whites before, so in my sad little world that was quite fun.  I folded them into the cream and sugar and waited patiently for the magic to happen.  It didn’t.  The cream would not thicken up and I was left with a delicious disastrous mess to fill the cakes with.  And time was running out.  Luckily, as often happens, Mum came to the rescue.  We grabbed the cakes, chocolate, and Plastic Icing Thing which Tom bought me in Corfu and drove to Grandma’s by way of Sainsbury’s, where we bought emergency whipping cream.

Once disaster had been averted, everyone seemed quite impressed with the little cream cakes.  Hopefully the success was a sign of progress rather beginner’s luck; I suppose the only way to find out is to make them again, although next time I will try to make them look a little less like Elvis...