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It's the festive season, which means lots of entertaining at Audley End House. For her latest recipe, Mrs Crocombe is preparing a Gertrude à la Crème, a great way to use up stale sponge cake and produce a decorative sweet centrepiece for the Christmas table.
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INGREDIENTS (makes 1 x 15 cm/ 6 inch cake)
1 slightly stale sponge cake, approx 15 cm/6 inches across
1 1⁄2 tbsp each raspberry, cherry, apricot, greengage and strawberry jam (jelly), or any others you like
4 egg whites
170 g/6 oz / 3⁄4 cup caster sugar
1⁄4 tsp cream of tartar
green food colouring powder
red food colouring powder
100 g / 3 1⁄2 oz / 1⁄2 cup white marzipan (almond paste)
1 tbsp icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar), plus extra for dusting
350 ml / 12 oz / 1 1⁄2 cups whipping cream
for the sugar syrup 11⁄2 tbsp water
1 1⁄2 tbsp sugar
to decorate
edible flowers (optional)
METHOD (from the Victorian Way cookery book)
• Slice the cake horizontally into 6 discs (or fewer, if necessary). With a 5 cm/2 inch round cutter, remove the centre of each disc (if you have a deep enough cutter, you can do this before you slice it), so that when you reassemble the cake it has one deep hole in the middle. The discards can be eaten or used for trifle (see p87).
• Spread each cake slice with a different thin layer of jam and rebuild the cake, carefully lining up the slices. It is helpful if the top layer is less full of jam than the rest. Preheat the oven to 140°C/275°F.
• Whisk the egg whites with the sugar and cream of tartar to make a thick meringue (the consistency should be somewhere between meringue and royal icing); at this point you can add a little powdered food colouring, if desired. The original recipe suggests green or rose are appropriate colours, but you can also leave it white. Using a palette knife, spread the meringue over the whole surface of the cake, including the sides of the central hole.
• Bake the cake for 50–60 minutes until the meringue is hardened but not brown. Remove and allow to cool.
• Make a sugar syrup by boiling the measured water and sugar in a saucepan until the sugar has dissolved. Leave to cool.
• Colour about two thirds of the marzipan green and the rest red.
• Roll out the green marzipan on an icing sugar-dusted surface to
3–4 mm/1/8 inch thick and cut out to form leaves, marking them lightly to form veins. Stick these to the cake with a little sugar syrup. With the red marzipan, make berries or other leaves. The decoration should resemble a leafy garland, so arranging it to look like sprays around the cake is the aim.
• Just before serving, whip the cream and icing sugar together to form stiff peaks, and fill an icing bag fitted with a star nozzle. Pipe the cream into the central hole in the guirlande, top with edible flowers, if using, and serve.
00:00 Intro
00:54 For this recipe, you will need...
01:28 Slicing the sponges
02:53 Hollowing out the layers
03:29 Spreading and reassembling
05:35 Making the icing
06:53 Icing the cake
08:26 Drying in the oven
08:45 Decorating the cake
10:40 Filling the centre
11:21 Final decorations
12:04 There you are...
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