Princess Torte

Happy Birthday Ryan!! I asked him what kind of cake he wanted and he said a princess cake. Several months ago we watched an episode of The Great British Baking Show where they made Princess cake. While growing up, Ryan frequently had marzipan cake from his Aunt Eva's Norwegian bakery. The bakery went out of business years and years ago and Ryan has been missing marzipan cake ever since. Shortly after we watched that episode of the Great British Baking show, I found a Craftsy class on sale called  "Classic European Tortes" one of which is the Princess torte. So when Ryan said that's what he wanted, I decided it was time finally watch the class I bought and make something. (I have a bad habit of finding great deals on stuff from Craftsy and buying them with the intent of getting around to them someday.) If you want to buy the class or find a recipe of your own to try- or track down Mary Berry's recipe from the Great British Baking show here are some of the things I learned along the way.

This cake is not cheap! First of all it's time consuming. I started it Friday afternoon and finally finished it yesterday (Saturday) afternoon. It isn't hard to make, it just takes a lot of time. And as Dad always said, "time is money." You have to make a sugar cookie crust and vanilla chiffon cake - both of which must them be cooled before they are used. Then you have to make vanilla pastry cream and Chantilly cream. Again, not difficult, just more time. Lastly, you have to make marzipan or buy it. I ended up buying marzipan- because I found it at the store. But if you make your own you have to have almond paste. Almond paste and marzipan and a little spendy. Then, the pastry cream needed a vanilla bean. Luckily, I had one. But I didn't have the vanilla bean paste needed for the Chantilly cream. That was $23 for a small jar! While watching the class, he did mention you could use vanilla extract or vanilla paste in place of the vanilla bean and vice versa, but that wasn't written in the recipe, so when buying stuff I figured I needed it all. Then I had to buy some new cake making accessories - okay, I didn't have too, I just wanted to. I got a cake turn table and some cake rounds. I really wanted a cake leveler and a larger offset spatula too, but they will have to wait until next time!

Vanilla bean paste is amazing! This is the first time I have ever used it. It is almost like a syrup with the tiny vanilla seeds suspended in it. Then whatever you put it in has flecks of vanilla seed. Which, as the chef teaching the class pointed out, makes your baking look more professional and expensive. It smells great too.

This recipe made two cakes but you need 3 layers for the princess cake. I don't know why this confused me so much. You are supposed to use ONE cake cut into THREE layers. The other entire cake is extra!! I didn't figure that out until after I had cut both cakes into two layers and used 3 of them in my cake. So my cake was 50% taller than it should have been - not a tragedy I guess, but that made the ratio of cake to filling a little too high. I also learned I need to get a cake level or practice cutting cakes. I don't think I could have cut my cakes into thirds even if I wanted to.

Beat the egg whites more than you think. I think part of the problem I had with my cakes was not beating the egg whites enough. He kept making a big deal about not over beating them, so I didn't. But then someone in the comments said their cake didn't rise and not beating the eggs enough will cause that. Also I added the sugar incorrectly. I put too much of it in the cake batter and not enough in the egg whites before I beat them. That was my own fault for not reading the instructions carefully before I started dumping in ingredients.

By the time I got to the Chantilly cream I did remember to beat that enough. The instructor is really worried about not over-beating. But my problem is definitely under-beating. Also in the recipe he says to use a 5g leaf gelatin. We do not have leaf gelatin in this country. Okay, maybe we do, but it's not a any grocery store near buy. I wonder if Gygi's or some other bakery shop would have it. Also leaf gelatin and powdered gelatin are not equivalent! From what little I learned, I think powdered gelatin may be stronger than leaf gelatin. So I knew I shouldn't just use 5 grams of powdered gelatin. Or maybe it is the same but leaf gelatin isn't measured in grams - it's measured in leaves. And I have no idea what size that is! Anyway, from looking at the recipe for Chantilly cream it looked like it is just stabilized whipped cream, which I have made before. So I looked at recipes for that to see how much gelatin they used in relation to how much heavy cream needs whipping. I ended up using 6 teaspoons of water and 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of powdered gelatin. (That's teaspoons NOT tablespoons. Yes, we did it wrong the first time because Adria was reading the recipe to me and apparently doesn't realize the difference is critical!) Sprinkle the powdered gelatin over the water and let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes until it turns into a gel. Then put it in the microwave for about 10 seconds until it turns into a liquid. Then slowly add it to the nearly done whipped cream. I did add a little of the sugar to the gelatin- less than the recipe said and but most of the sugar directly into the cream as well as the vanilla paste.

The last learning experience was the marzipan. I used premade, but I bough the stuff to make my own too. I probably should have used both. The marzipan I had was 198 grams. The recipe said I needed 209 grams of almond paste. So I figured that was close enough. It's only now that I am realizing that the recipe also called for 138 g of powdered sugar and 32g of egg white - so total weight would have been closer to 350 g. So I had about half of what I needed. SAD! Ryan loves marzipan. By the time I had rolled mine out big enough to cover the cake (which remember was taller than it should have been) the marzipan layer was VERY thin. When watching the video, he had a TON of left over marzipan. I barely had enough. So I think I would increase that amount- even more than the 350 grams correct amount. I didn't do a great job getting my marizpan on the cake either. I had some ripples around the edges, partly because the cake was too tall and partly because it was my first time working with marzipan.

Marzipan is yummy! But I must admit the first time I ever had a marzipan cake when Ryan and I were dating, I wasn't thrilled about it. Did you know your taste buds regenerate every 7 years. That's some of that useless trivia Ryan knows and told me. So that explains why now I like marzipan and I didn't like it 20 plus years ago. Adria and Genna weren't too excited about it. Adria said my cake needed some lemon extract so that the cake tasted like something. (She gets lemon cake for her birthday.) Neither one of them liked the marzipan much. But Ryan thought it was great! He said they reminded him of the cakes his mom would buy for his birthday from his aunt's Norwegian bakery. So I guess my first attempt was a success, even if I the cake was too tall and the marzipan wasn't smooth. Too bad my pics aren't any better.