Winter Forest Cake

Hello, my friends,

   I spent my Christmas with my boyfriend's family and, obviously, I wanted to add some RUssian touch to it and also let them try something not so typical (in echange I would get to it typical British Christmas traditional food and sweets).
   As I was ill, I didnt get much preparation done, so couple of hours before hitting the road for the 3 hour journey down South, I got few ingredients from the shop and got to baking. The cake itself is so quickly and easily made, that I think even the kid will be able to prepare it :)

Yummy cake, covered with white chocolate cream, decorated with fresh blueberries and icing sugar;
Ummm..Yumm...Yummm....





So, to make this amazing piece of yummy cake,

 
You will need
Cake base:
3 eggs;
1/2 glass of sugar;
1 tea spoon vanilla extract;
1/2 glass of flour;
5 tbl spoons of any jam;

Cream:
340gr cream cheese (Philadelphia or any supermarket own brand);
240gr good quality white chocolate;
170gr butter;
1/3 lemon juice;
 Decor:
Any type of berries, fruits (kiwi, mango pieces, clementines);
Optional:
1 tea spoon of cognac;
Icing sugar;

   First of all, switch your oven and put it to 170C or mark 3, and get to business. Beat your 3 eggs in a bowl, quickly whisk and add sugar and vanilla,  mix it for about 5-10 minutes, you will see how it will become 3 times more of your mixture.
   Thats when you add your flour and carefully fold it in, DONT mix it in with your mixer, so you dont destroy the fluffiness. Pour it in the cake shape, cover with tin foil and bake in the oven for 30 minutes, then lower the temperature down to 150C (or mark 2) and bake for another 30 minutes. Let it cool and then carefully cut into three part horizontally.
   You can cover all three top parts with any jam (which I prefer)

   Or just mix your cognac with half a glass of water and put it on top of each piece to soak in. Leave it to stay like that and meantime you can make a lovely and delicious cream.
    Let me tell you how.  Melt white chocolate (I find the quickest way to do it is break it into squares and put it in a microwave for a very short time. But make sure its high quality, else it will just burn in there to the black colour.) Take the chocolate out and let it cool. And meantime, beat up and fluff up cream cheese.
Once chocolate is not hot (usually 10 minutes is enough), add it to your cheese, add butter there as well (butter should be house temperature, else it will stick to your mixer forks), add lemon juice and mix it all together.
   There you go, thats how the consistency of the cream should look like when its ready and you can stop working on it with your mixer:

  Once the mixture will have an even consistency and will look like you want to put your spoon in there and eat it as it is, you take it and apply it to the top of each cake base:
    Then you carefully stick them all on top of each other (thats my favourite part) and smear it with more cream and put your cream all around it as well. There will be a lot of white mixture, so dont feel greedy and apply it on the cake from all sides.



   After you are done with applying white paste all around the cake, it should look like this:

    I prefer to decorate it with fruits and this time I decided to use blueberries for two reasons - those are my favourite berries and also it looks like an enchanted winter forest after I have sprinkled it with the icing sugar on top.

    Doesnt it look lovely and ready to eat?


   Cake happened to be a hit with everyone during Christmas Dinner and it was all gone in no time. I promise I didnt eat more than one slice, leaving all the goodness for the family :) 

   The story of how I was holding this cake on my knees for the entire car journey, and it was looking at me, asking me to lick it and bite a piece off is a completely different story for another post... :)
   If you do make it, please, send me pictures of your versions of this cake, I would love to see how you decorated it.

   Until then...

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