Second Birthday Celebrations

Well, it's that time of the year again, when I officially go older overnight. Lundulph had made up plans for the day in question, sothe family celebrations took place a bit later.

This was the perfect opportunity to repeat the Stoichkov cake with an alternative filling and see if it would collapse again or not.

Well, it worked quite a treat!

I squashed the chocolate roll slices quite a bit and used the edge offcuts to fill in most of the gaps between. This resulted in running out of Swiss roll and not having any left for the bottom of the cake. So 4 Swiss rolls next time.



This time for the cream filling, I soaked 8 pieces of gelatine. The packet had 12 and was to set 1.7 l liquid. I soaked the gelatine in cool water. I used 500 ml ready fresh custard from Sainsbury's, which I heated up, while the gelatine was soaking. Then I squeezed out the water and dropped the gelatine in the custard. Note, that the custard never started steaming, so on low heat, just to heat it through. I also added 3 tbsp caster sugar, which dissolved nicely as well.

As expected, it went runny when the gelatine melted and I set it to the side. I then whipped 300 ml double cream together with 2 tbsp icing sugar. To stiff peaks, no less.

At this point the custard had cooled down sufficiently and I stirred in the cream with a spoon very gently until it was well mixed through. The cream was still fairly runny, but it was a good thing I started filling the cake, because towards the end, it had started to set. I managed to get in one layer of really large blueberries, then one layer of bananas and finally another layer of blueberries. Each with cream on either side and there wasn't much left in the pot to lick.

Then on with clingfilm and in the fridge to set overnight. When I poked it in the morning, it seemed pretty solid.

I was intending to use the remaining four pieces of gelatine for the glazing, but was too scared to take the cake out early and risk it collapsing. Now that I know that it'll hold, I'll do the glaze next time.



In fact it was ever so nice, although some cream seeped through a couple of holes I thought were too small. So even more squeezing of the Swiss roll next time as well.

Once we'd cut the cake up, it was sufficiently stiff to stay in shape, and most people had seconds, so overall a success!