This was an impromptu dessert to celebrate my son
's monthly birthday. We hadn't gotten around to cutting a cake or celebrating his monthly Birth
day on the 1st and I wanted to do something special for him over the weekend! We had a late Friday night and was up with my alarm clock (read:
my son) at 6:30am.
I wanted a quick dessert completed within an hour before my boys woke up and demanded my attention... Delhi has become really really hot suddenly and I wanted to do something light and fluffy and fruity! I dug out a box of ready cake mix - moist vanilla cake flavor (Pillsbury). I thought I will bake a cake and add some fresh fruit and cream to it and voila my dessert would be ready.
I baked the cake according to the
instructions and being a novice baker made added some M
ascarpone cheese to the batter and baked it too much and instead of a white fluffy cake I found a flat bread like looking thing in my cake tin.
Anyways here goes the recipe:
Bake cake according to instructions on the box and add one yolk less and 2-3 tbsp Mascarpone cheese to the batter. Bake for 5-7 minutes less than what is mentioned on the box and let cake cool.
I then took equal parts Mascarpone cheese and heavy cream and whipped it together till slightly stiff with 1 tbsp Castor sugar and left it in the fridge (since it was too hot to leave it outside...). While the cake was cooling I ran to my "fruitwalla" and got a box of the most luscious looking strawberries to add to my dessert because I couldn't think of anything better than the bright blood red berries to offset the whiteness of the cake and cream...
If your cake rises nicely unlike mine then slice it from the middle and add 1/4 of the cream mixture and strawberries (cut into small bite sized pieces) and sandwich the two cakes together. Then take the remaining cream mixture and coat the cake on the outside and decorate with strawberries cut into halves.
That was my original idea which didn't pan out quite well... so this is what I did with my dessert:
I tried to slice my cake but that didn't turn out quite well so I cut out small round cakes from my big cake (using a sharp edged bowl). I then pretty much stuck to my original idea and used the marcarpone and cream mixture to sandwich together the cake and strawberries (as seen in the picture and I put the remnants of the cake I put them in glasses - alternating layers of cake, cream and strawberry's and topped it with a dollop of cream.
Despite my disastrous cake the end result turned out to be great. the mascarpone cheese in the cake gave it a a very soft texture dipped in syrup kinda texture and noone can really go wrong with strawberry's and cream!!!!
The dessert won me rave reviews from my in-laws and husband and he actually proclaimed it my best dessert ever! I wish the pictures could do justice to the taste but you will just have to take my word for it.
Till next time....
