Young housewives often underestimate themselves, believing that they are not allowed to comprehend the basics of confectionery art, and therefore do not even try to "conjure" in their kitchen, cook something sweet, surprise and please the family.
Meanwhile, you just need to remember that everything in this life happens for the first time to each of us, and each person once did not know how to walk, talk, read, write ...
In short, you just need to believe in yourself.
Cakes, too, were once invented and made for the first time, and two and a half thousand years before our era, sweet pastries were not even called cake. The art of home baking is as old as people grow wheat.
It's not about the name: cake or pie, in Italy, in France, in England or in Russia, the tradition of baking products from sweet dough has a thousand-year history. In those days, pies and cakes knew how to bake in every home, long before the advent of the profession of confectioner.
In a word, imagine that you bake an ordinary pie from any sweet dough, because the Russian word "pie", in contrast to the Italian word "cake", is more familiar and understandable, but in essence the cooking technology is the same. A variety of types of dough, fillings or creams, decorating methods, of course, there are many, but the basics of confectionery techniques and methods for making cakes and any other confectionery from sweet dough are easy to analyze and classify. Knowing the properties of the main products that make up the cakes, their interaction and the ability to change with different methods of heat or mechanical processing, you can easily realize your own confectionery idea - to create a cake from your favorite foods and goodies, and even create competition for professional confectioners.
Cake with raisins, nuts and poppy seeds - basic technological principles
It is also called bulk. The basis is beaten egg mass. During mechanical action (whipping) between the molecules of the egg white, which turns into a coupled protein fibers during the whipping process, air bubbles accumulate. The longer and more intensive the whipping, the more elastic the egg mass becomes, and the more air bubbles accumulate in it. The addition of flour containing gluten gives stability to the egg mass. Flour absorbs some of the moisture from the eggs, also forming gluten fibers and binding the dough. But the flour is heavier, so its excess can precipitate the dough, squeezing air bubbles with its weight. To reduce the density of flour and saturate it with air, professionals strongly recommend that you always sift the flour before putting it into the dough.
Under the influence of hot air, the dough proteins are combined into a stable structure, preventing the exit of air bubbles that remain between the layers of fibers. When baking a biscuit, some of the moisture also evaporates, the dough acquires a dense consistency. Everything, the biscuit is ready. Where is the sugar? Of course, sugar is also added, and flavorings, and butter, and raisins, nuts, candied fruits - everything that you want. But the main thing to remember: the basis of the biscuit is eggs and flour. By the way, eggs should only be fresh and chilled. Proteins and yolks are better whipped separately.
Then they are connected, but already using a spatula or spoon, and not a mixer. Flour should also be introduced, carefully mixing it with the egg mass in small portions, dispersing it over the surface of the egg mass so that no lumps form. Try not to have too much flour: the lightness, puffiness and humidity of the finished biscuit depend on this. Remember that flour is only necessary for the stability of the structure of egg protein fibers.
Now about sugar. The ideal option for biscuit dough, of course, is not crystalline sugar, but icing powder, consisting of smaller and lighter particles that will not "injure" the dough and connect to it faster. The amount of sugar in the biscuit dough only affects the taste of the dough. Many people think that there should be a lot of sugar in the biscuit dough, and that it "helps" make the protein mass airy. It's a delusion. To make the biscuit sweet, just 20 g of sugar or powder per 1 egg is enough, the weight of which is on average 40-50 g. That is, the ratio is 1: 2. Back to the eggs: they are more than 80% water. To ensure approximately the same ratio of dry and wet ingredients of bulk dough, we combine the powder with flour in an equal amount. If we are talking about chocolate biscuit, then part of the flour needs to be replaced with cocoa powder.
All additional ingredients for biscuit cakes are prepared and added first to the flour, and then, together with the flour, to the egg mass. Nuts are preliminarily fried and chopped, poppy, raisins or other dried fruits are washed, steamed and must be dried.
Making cream and decorating the cake is a separate issue, and this is largely a creative process, depending on the imagination of the pastry chef.
Recipe 1. Cake with raisins and nuts "Tale of Scheherazade"
Ingredients for Raisin Chocolate Biscuit:
Vanilla 5 g
Amaretto (for impregnation) 50 ml
Sugar (including for syrup) 130 g
Or 80 g of powder and 50 g of sugar
Flour 120 g
Water 40 ml
4 eggs (160 g)
Raisins 70 g
Cocoa 20 g
Boiled condensed milk 150 g
Almond chips 100 g
Oil 82.5% 90 g
White chocolate chips 100 g
Caramel "Mint"
Decor: flowers, butterflies, colored mastic powder
Cooking:
To make a biscuit dough, you will need eggs, cocoa, flour, vanilla, 80 g of sugar or powder and raisins. Turn on the oven. The temperature for baking a biscuit is 180ºϹ. Prepare a detachable mold. Combine flour with sifted cocoa, icing sugar and vanilla. Add washed, steamed and dried raisins to the dry mixture. Add the dry mixture to the beaten egg mass, as described above in the basic technological principles. After baking, do not rush to get a biscuit from the mold. When it has cooled completely, cut into three layers.
Prepare the soaking syrup from Amaretto, 40 ml of water and the remaining sugar. Dissolve sugar in hot water, cool slightly and mix with liquor. Sprinkle the cut cakes.
Combine softened butter with condensed milk, whisk by adding vanilla. Pour the almonds into the cream and mix. Collect the cake, greasing each layer with the prepared cream. Lubricate the side of the cake with the same cream and sprinkle it with white chocolate chips mixed with almonds.
To decorate, melt caramel in a water bath. Take a small round balloon, inflate it and pour molten sweets in a thin stream onto the surface of the balloon. When the caramel hardens again, blow the air out of the ball and carefully separate the caramel mesh, which should solidify in the form of a hemisphere. Place the caramel decor on the surface of the cake. After wetting the caramel with water, attach butterflies and sugar mastic flowers to it. Sprinkle the cake with colored sugar.
Recipe 2. Cake with raisins, nuts and poppy seeds "Riddle of the Pharaoh" without baking
Ingredients:
Shortbread Cookies (square) 900 g
Eggs 4 yolks and 2 whole eggs
Sugar 200 g
Oil 250 g
Flour 75 g
Vanilla 5 g
Milk 300 ml
Cashew nuts, fried (crumbs) 150 g
Fig jam 100 g
Poppy 50 g
Raisins 120 g
Cooking:
Make custard: combine sugar, flour. Beat the eggs, add milk to them, and then the dry mixture. After mixing the mass until a homogeneous consistency, cook over low heat until thickened with continuous stirring. When cool, add oil and vanilla. Whisk gradually increasing speed until thickened. In the cooked cream, also add poppy seeds and nut crumbs.
From the cookies on the dish, put the square in one layer. Lubricate it with custard. Step back from the edge of 1.5-2 cm, lay out the next layer of cookies, also in the shape of a square. On it lay the berries from fig jam, combined with raisins. Each next square layer should be smaller than the previous one, so that in the end the cake was formed in the form of a pyramid. Coat each side of the pyramid with the remaining custard, smooth the surface and apply a geometric pattern.
Soak the cake in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours.
Recipe 3. Cake with raisins and nuts "Meteorite"
Ingredients:
Flour 140 g
Oil 82.5% 160 g
Potato starch 20 g
4 eggs
Vanilla essence 5-6 drops
Chocolate, black 200 g
Raisins 100 g
Rum 10 ml
Nuts, walnuts (kernels) 160 g (net)
Cooking:
Combine flour with starch. Pound the butter with sugar, adding vanilla essence and rum, beat whites and yolks. Combine the proteins with the yolks, then the butter, mix and add the flour and starch. Bake butter sponge cake as the main one. When it cools, cut arbitrarily into slices.
Melt the chocolate and, when slightly cooled, combine it with butter until smooth.
Take a container of a spherical shape and lay in it layers of baked biscuit, crushed nut, raisins. Smear each layer with chocolate cream. After keeping the semi-finished product in the cold until it solidifies, remove the container from the refrigerator and turn it over to a round dish. Lubricate the surface of the cake with cream, pour over melted chocolate and sprinkle with crushed nuts.
Recipe 4. Cake with raisins, nuts and poppy seeds "Vesuvius"
Ingredients:
For shortcakes:
White and chocolate biscuit (recipe number 1)
Pomegranate juice 300 ml
Raisins, dark 150 g
Poppy, pastry 100 g
Sugar for marmalade 150 g
Agar Agar 5 g
Blackcurrant liquor 50 ml
Chocolate chips 250 g
Almond flakes or nuts 120 g
Cooking:
Take a round shape for a biscuit, with a diameter of 24 -26 cm, and a shape for a large cake, the same diameter. Make a white biscuit dough, taking the ingredients according to the recipe number 1, but replacing the cocoa flour and bake in a round form. Prepare the second chocolate sponge cake exactly as indicated in the same recipe and bake it in a cake pan with a notch in the center.
Transfer the prepared, chilled biscuits to a dish: white cake - down, and on top of it - chocolate biscuit with a hole in the center.
Bring pomegranate juice to a boil, dissolve sugar in it and add agar-agar, prepared raisins and poppy seeds, Cook for 5-7 minutes and turn it off. When the juice has cooled to 40ºϹ, pour in the liquor. Pour the beginning to solidify the marmalade mass into the hole in the center of the biscuit. Lubricate the surface of the cake with the same mass, sprinkling with chocolate chips, nuts and poppy seeds. Make flowing paths out of liquid marmalade, simulating red-hot lava flowing down to the foot of a volcano.
Recipe 5. Cake with raisins and nuts "Favorite"
Ingredients:
Eggs 3 pcs.
Flour 400 g
Sugar 100 g
Roasted peanuts
Butter
Soda 5 g
Lemon juice 25 ml
Sour cream 15% 300 g
Whipped cream 250 g
Strawberry 400 g
Cooking:
From sour cream, flour, eggs and sugar, prepare the dough, as for a fritters, adding at the end of kneading soda, quenched with lemon juice. Bake the cakes in a pan, pouring 0.5 cm thick dough into it. Combine the cooled cakes, greasing each with whipped cream and shifting the layers with pieces of roasted peanuts and strawberries. Put the cake in the refrigerator for the night so that the cakes are soaked.
Cake with raisins, nuts and poppy seeds - tricks and tips
To prevent the biscuit dough from settling after it is saturated with air by whipping, it is baked immediately. Temperature is average. When baking, in no case should you open the oven to look. You can’t shake or even accidentally push the biscuit mold: if air comes out, you get a hard, dry and thin pancake.
When whipping for biscuit dough, eggs should be laid only in dry, non-greasy dishes. Even better, if the egg bowl is metal, stainless steel, and before the egg is beaten, it will cool properly in the freezer.
