Pink Swedish Princess Cake





I think I need to remind myself over and over again, no more weekday cakes please, but I just couldn't resist. There were times when I just wanted to quit when I was making a cake in a time crunch. When you only have an hour everyday to pull together a cake, your planning must be good. But I'm no quitter, even if it means that I have to wake up super bright and early for a few days to finish it, you can't quit what you have started (there are exceptions of course :D).

Now, the cake. It was a request from a friend who likes princess cake so much for another friend's birthday (talking about selfish :P, j/k). Boy, do we have lots of birthday celebrations lately. The request was that it must be pink because it is the birthday girl's favorite color, despite the fact that traditional princess cake is green. If you follow my blog, you would see that I made this cake a few times before and everytime, I kept changing something whether it's the type of the cake base, the simply syrup, the proportions of cream and/or pastry cream, etc.



This time is no difference. I decided to make my own raspberry jelly instead of the usual seedless raspberry jam used in a princess cake. I always find that store-bought jam is way too sweet to my liking. Although, looking at the economical point of view, making your own is not too beneficial though as the cost of the raspberry itself is equal to the cost of a jar of jam (not to mention the time and labor put into it). Plus, you would still have plenty of jam leftover if you buy it. But I am such a hard-headed or stubborn person if you may call it, that I'd still make it myself despite that I know all the plus and minus behind it. It's not too difficult, just a little time-consuming because you have to puree the raspberries and strain it (the part which I like the least everytime I pureed something --> takes too much time and more dishes to wash) then heat it, add the gelatin, and finally let it cool down to thicken (may take a while). I didn't even use a measurement, just kinda go for it.

I followed the traditional filling for princess cake, which is three layers of sponge cake (usually genoise type), simple syrup to moisten it (I flavored it with raspberry puree-->can't you tell how much I love raspberry already?), a thin layer of raspberry jam (made my own) and cream for the bottom filling, vanilla bean pastry cream as the second layer of filling and more cream on top to cover the cake and to form the dome, and finally enrobed with marzipan. I can never get a soft pastel color for the marzipan, it has a natural brown almond color that whatever color you color it with, it will always be darker. But I found some white marzipan somewhere online the other day, had to try it someday. It's not a difficult cake to make as each filling is pretty straight forward. You don't even need a particular recipe, you just need to know the components that make up the cake.



I wasn't 100% satisfied with the decoration as I think I rolled the marzipan too thin that the cake inside is showing (you can tell from the picture). I also did a poor job on covering it. You can probably notice it too that the bottom part has some wrinkles. I just use the leftover marzipan to make pearls for the bottom border and brush it with pink luster dust to make it shiny. I also had to hunt for the roses though, luckily we have a mini rose plant at the front yard so I just had to pick out the best ones to put onto the cake.



I couldn't make it to the birthday dinner though as work was calling. But I was so.....glad and relieved after I heard that the cake had rave reviews, everybody really liked it. Pheeww.... talking about pressure. I was afraid that I would mess up something in the proportion since I keep changing something everytime I make the same type of cake. Unfortunately I couldn't taste it myself, thanks to my friend who forgot to save me a slice :P, but as long as everybody likes it, that's all I need :D




4 comments:

Springbird said...

Beautifully looking cake...i was searching for Swedish cake and found ur site.nice presentation and gr8 click.

Kim S. said...

Actually since this is pink, it would be called an Opera cake - rather than a princess cake. Changing it to yellow changes it to another name too - no idea why -just the way Scandinavians roll I guess.

Bertha said...

Kim: Really? I didn't know that, thanks! Hmm.. opera cake sounds deceiving as opera cake is well-known as the joconde/coffee/chocolate cake. Thanks for the great info! :)

Dominique said...

Yep, that's an opera cake. The yellow one would be a Carl-Gustav Cake