Boston Cream Pie

Finally back to our cake theme just in time for New Year's! Today’s cake is called a pie but it’s actually a cake. I am making Boston Cream Pie. In the past we have made the cupcake version which is so tasty, but for a Summer Birthday this past year I decided on trying the actual big cake. Again, there is a lot that goes into it so you want to make sure you have time, which I had lots of this past Summer.

The Cake (it’s best to make a sponge cake as it’s lighter and fluffier and not so dense)

You will need the following to make a sponge cake…

¾ cup of flour

1 tsp. of baking powder

¼ tsp. of salt

3 tbsp. of milk

2 tbsp. of butter

½ tsp. of vanilla

3 large egg whites

¼ tsp. cream of tartar

¾ cup of sugar

3 large egg yolks

2 large eggs

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

Grease and flour two 9 inch round cake pans and line with parchment paper.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Then heat the milk and butter in a saucepan on medium heat until the butter is melted. Off of the heat stir in the vanilla and cover to keep warm.

In your mixer bowl, whip up the egg whites and cream of tartar until foamy. Then increase the speed and fully whip the egg whites until they are billowy mounds. Gradually whip in 6 tbsp. of sugar and continue to whip the whites until they are shiny and form soft peaks.

If you have another bowl for your mixer, great, but if not transfer the egg whites and then clean the bowl and whip the 3 eggs yolks and the full eggs on medium high speed and add 6 tbsp. of sugar. Whip until the mixture is very thick and fluffy.

Now, place the full egg mixture on top of the egg whites and then sift the flour mixture over the top of this.

Fold everything together gently until just combined.

Pour the warm milk mixture against the side of the bowl and fold some more until everything looks evenly combined and there are no streaks of flour left. Do not over stir. Scrape the batter into the pans and bake for 12-18 minutes or until the cakes are lightly browned. Be very careful when these cakes are baking. Don’t open the over or bounce around too much!

Run a knife around the outer edge of the cakes when they come out so they don’t stick. Then flip them onto a lined plate. The cakes will be wrong side down so now flip them right side up and allow them to cool on a wire rack. They should be cooled after 2 hours. I let mine sit overnight before I did anything to them.

Now for the filling.

You will need…

2 cups of whole milk

6 large egg yolks

½ cups of sugar

¼ tsp. of salt

¼ cup of cornstarch

2 tbsp. of butter

1 tsp. of vanilla

Bring the milk to a simmer in a saucepan over medium heat. 

While this is happening whisk the egg yolks, sugar, and salt together in a bowl. Then whisk in the cornstarch.

Slowly whisk in the warm milk into the egg mix and then transfer the mixture back into the saucepan. Cook, whisking constantly until thick and glossy looking.

Now off of the heat, whisk in the butter and vanilla.

Transfer into a bowl and place plastic wrap on the surface. Chill and allow it to set for about 2 hours in the fridge.

Ganache/Glaze

Now lastly for the glaze topping you will need…

I waited to do this until about 20 minutes before I was ready to serve the cake because I didn’t want it to get soggy.

2/3 cup of heavy cream

¼ cup of light corn syrup

1cup of semisweet chocolate

½ tsp. of vanilla

Microwave all of the ingredients and whisk until melted and smooth. Let the glaze cool a little bit until it’s thicken but still able to pour.

Now to assemble the cake.

Place some parchment paper down and on top of that place a cooling rack with the bottom layer of your cake.

Spread the custard filling on top and then place the top layer on to of that.

It’s time to glaze. Pour the cooled chocolate glaze right in the centre on top of the cake the glaze should drip all the way down the sides. It won’t be perfectly covered. That’s ok, it’s not supposed to be.

Like I said before, do this about 20 minutes before you want to eat the cake and then put it in the fridge to harden up. You can do this up to a day before but to avoid sogginess and slippage, I would try and do it day of. The leftovers, if there are any, can go in the fridge. They may get a little smooshed and soggy but that’s alright for the leftovers. Now that was a marathon cake to bake!

Better than Robert Redford Part 2

Alrighty, today it’s part two of our Robert Redford dessert.

So when we met last, we had made the crust and puddings. Today we start off by making the cream cheese layer. Beat one brick of cream cheese (8 ounces) along with 1 cup of icing sugar. Whip up until smooth. Fold in about 2 cups of Cool Whip (that’s half of a 500ml container).

Spread this cream cheese mixture over the baked and cooled crust.

Now give the vanilla pudding a stir and spread that over the cream cheese layer.

After that, stir the chocolate pudding and spread that over the vanilla pudding layer.

If you plan on eating this right away you can do the final layer and topping now, if not, you can wait until you are ready to eat it. I made this over three days so I waited.

When you are ready, spread a nice thick layer of Cool Whip over the top. The remaining container from the cream cheese filling wasn’t quite enough so I actually used almost half of another 500ml container.

Finally use a vegetable peeler and peel a block of semi sweet chocolate. I used Bakers squares. Cut and serve. This was delicious. People had seconds and even thirds! Divine. 

DIY Paper Basket

With Spring in full gear now we are going to share with you a little how-to Spring/Easter basket that you can make. These are perfect to use as an afternoon craft project with the kids on Spring Break so they can have them ready for egg collecting on Easter morning or you can use them as decorations or even as a goodie “bag” at a party or gift basket to give to someone. They can be as cute or as sophisticated as you want them to be.

Here’s how to make them...

We actually made two different sized baskets. The first one (blue) is made from regular sized paper that we cut into a 8 ¼ x 8 ¼ inch square. You can really use any size paper but it needs to be cut into a square. The bigger the paper the bigger the basket. We also made one (pink) that was slightly larger so we made that a 12x12 inch square. We have also provided lots of step by step by step pictures as some of the steps are hard to explain.

So the process at the start is the same for any size. You will need to start off with a square then you mark it into thirds in both directions so you end up with nine smaller equal squares.

Then you cut the two lines on the bottom third and the two lines on the top third (as shown in the picture below).

Now fold all the side towards the middle along the lines.

Here’s where things get a little different.

Blue Basket (wider shallower basket): Put glue on the sides of the bottom middle square and then glue the bottom corner squares to the middle so it forms a triangle. Repeat at the top.

Then use scissors to round the four corners of the basket.

Take a long thin strip (ours is from what was left over of the paper that we made into a square which was about 8 ½ inches long but you can make yours whatever size you like) and glue the strip on like a handle.

Now you can decorate. We used some punches but you can draw, stamp, or sticker things to it. Keep in mind that stamping and drawing would be more difficult when the basket is already assembled.

Pink Basket (taller deep basket): Take each corner and spilt into thirds again and cut. 

Now take the middle bottom square and mark the middle of the edge and cut into a triangle and do the same on the other side. Fold along lines. 

Glue the inner third from the right hand side to the inner third from the left hand side so they are perpendicular to each other.

Then continue overlapping and gluing sides, adding thirds and alternating sides until you’ve used them all.

The last ones should be in line with each other.

Glue the remaining triangles upward to hide all of the overlapping gluing that you’ve just done and probably to hold things in place as well.

Fold little one inch circles (ours probably could have been a little bigger) to help hide all of the edges and corners at the top

Attach a handle. Again it can be whatever size and colour you choose. Lastly, decorate!