So this year is my 18th birthday. I decided to make my own cake instead of going out to buy another one from one of those Chinese Bakeries. I love how their cakes are always soft on the inside and creamy on the outside. After hunting for a recipe for a while, I finally found one!
I start out by making the custard part first because this is the one where you'll need to refrigerate overnight.
Ingredients:
1/4 C. Granulated Sugar
1/4 C. All Purpose flour
1/8 t. salt
1 C. Milk
1 Large egg
1 t. vanilla
1) Mix the sugar, flour, and salt in a medium saucepan. Stir in 3/4 cup of milk and mix until smooth.
2) Bring the mixture to a boil ad medium heat but you must whisk is constantly. If you don't, lumps will start to form. Be careful not to scrape off any clumps that form on the sides and bottoms. If it is cooked onto the sides, you'll not want it :)
3) Cook another 2 minutes and remove from heat. At this point, your mixture should have thicked up dramatically.
4) Mix together egg with remaining 1/4 C. of milk and then combine the mixture in the saucepan whisking vigorously to combine. Return to heat and cook until it just starts to boil. There will be a lot of lumps as you first incorporate the egg mixture but just keep whisking as you heat it up and most of the lumps should disappear.
5) Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Transfer to a bowl and cover with plastic wrap directly touching the surface of the custard to prevent any skin from forming on the custard. If you still have any remaining clumps in the custard, now would be a good time to put some more elbow grease into the whisking and if you really can't get rid of them, just scoop them out :)
6) Chill at least 2 hours in the fridge or preferably overnight :)
See how thick and creamy it looks?
I will add pictures later but meanwhile, here's the recipe
For the Cake:
Ingredients:
0.7 cups of all-purpose flour
0.8 cups of granulated sugar (split into 2 even portions)
6 large eggs, separated into yolks and whites
1.4 tbsp butter, melted
1.4 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 baking pans (8 or 9" in diameter)
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 340 degrees F. Grease the two baking pans on the bottoms and sides. Cut out wax paper or parchment paper to the size of the bottoms and lay on top of the grease. Apply more grease to the tops of the paper. Sprinkle some flour in the pan and shake to coat thinly and evenly on the greased areas.
Note: I omitted the parchment paper/wax paper because I didn't have any..
2. Warm eggs to room temperature, and separate into 6 yolks and 6 egg whites. Be sure to separate carefully because any bit of yolk that gets into the egg whites will make whipping the whites much more difficult.
3. Mix first sugar portion (0.4 cups) with the egg yolks and beat until slightly thick and pale yellow.
4. Stir in vanilla to the yolk mixture.
5. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until they are 60% foamy (a little more than halfway to forming stiff peaks). Add the remaining portion of sugar (0.4 cups) in three separate additions while continuing to whip egg whites. Continue until stiff peaks form when the beaters are pulled away from the foam (this is meringue).
7. Add melted butter and milk to the batter.
8. Fold in the remaining half of the meringue carefully. Now it's ready to bake!
10. Remove cakes from oven and leave in pan to cool to room temperature.
For the Whipped Cream Frosting (Stabilized Whipped Cream Topping):
Ingredients:
2 tbsp cold water
1 tsp unflavored gelatin
2 cups (1 pint) of chilled heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
2.5 tbsp of confectioner's sugar
Directions:
1. Soak gelatin powder in the cold water for 5 minutes to let it absorb the water.
2. Dissolve gelatin by placing it in a bowl over a small pot of simmering water and stirring until clear. Let cool but do not let it get cold.
3. Meanwhile, use an electric standing or hand-held mixer to beat heavy cream in a large well-chilled bowl. (I like to throw my beaters and bowl into the freezer for a few minutes before beating the cream to make sure everything is super cold. I also prepare a bath of ice and cold water to put my chilled bowl into while I'm beating the cream so that everything stays nice and cold. These steps are crucial to making good whipped cream.
- Beat cream on low speed until small bubbled form (about 30 seconds)
- Increase speed to medium and beat until beaters leave a trail in the cream (about 30 seconds)
- Increase speed to high, moving beaters around bowl. Beat until just before it becomes soft and billowy.
- Slowly add sugar and vanilla at the sides of the bowl while continuing to whip until it is barely stiff.
- Add the melted but cooled gelatin all at once while beating, until cream becomes thicker and drier.
4. Use immediately for frosting or refrigerate for later use.
1. Carefully remove cakes from pans, cutting around edges if necessary.
2. Using a long serrated knife, cut away the skin of the cakes (the brown parts on the surface). Be sure to make the surfaces as flat as possible.
5. Brush each cake with a thin layer of simple syrup on all surfaces. This helps keep the cake moist and is very necessary when making a sponge cake which can be too dry without syrup. Don't worry though, it doesn't make the cake taste too sweet or anything.
6. Set up your cake plate or cake round with strips of wax paper to prevent frosting from getting on the plate. Lay the first cake layer down onto the plate.
8. Add prepared fruit pieces on top of the custard, covering the entire custard area. It will be a beautiful sight! Add remaining custard on top of the fruit, again not going all the way out to the edges.
10. Frost the cake using the stabilized whipped cream topping and a wide blade or a frosting spatula. It's a bit of an art form to frost a cake, so I suggest you do a little bit of research if you care about what the cake looks like. Otherwise you can go the rustic route and make it look very homemade. I'm just going to suggest some general tips:
- Start by spreading a thin layer on top and on the sides of the cake. This is called the crumb coat.
- Next, generously add a second layer of cream to the top of the cake and spread to the edges.
- Add cream to the sides of the cake, and smooth it with your blade as you turn around the cake.
- Smooth out the top of the cake by running your blade flat and making sweeps across the cake as you turn it.
11. Now you can be creative about how you want to decorate your cake. I have a little cake decorator gadget (basically a piping bag in a plastic gadget) so I used that to pipe out shells along the top and bottom edge of the cake rim. I then make florets and stars on the top and garnished with my prepared fruit.
12. For the finishing touch, you can make a nearly clear glaze that can be brushed on top of your fruit to give them a glass-like finish similar to the fruit on top of fruit tarts. To do so, simply heat 1/4 cup of preserves (any flavor, I used strawberry but apricot is pretty popular) with an equal amount of water. Stir until boiling. You may add more water or reduce by boiling off the water to alter the consistency of your glaze. Press the boiled preserved through a fine sieve to separate out the fruit and seeds, leaving you with a pretty, translucent glaze. While it is still warm, gently brush it over your fruit and let it dry to achieve that beautiful shiny finish. I only brushed a little bit of glaze on my fruit because I couldn't find a small enough brush and I didn't want to ruin my frosting by accident. Still, I could see a huge difference between my glazed and unglazed fruit.
13. Finally, put your cake into the fridge and chill for a few hours to let the frosting set. It is best served in the same day it was made.
I don't have pictures that show the step by step process but here's the result :)
(See the bubbles?)
I know it looks ugly but it tastes really good :)
Finish them off by brushing them with eggwash and a final sprinkling of cinnamon sugar! The eggwash gives them a really pretty shiny finish. Bake these for 25-30 min, rotating the pan as needed to bake evenly. We just used a small conventional toaster oven and set it to bake instead of heating up the huge kitchen oven! 
