I got a craving earlier this week for jelly cakes - something I haven't had since I was a kid. I remembered them as a cube of sponge cake dipped in red jelly and then rolled in shredded coconut. Sort of like a lamington, but with a jelly coating instead of chocolate.
I dug up a recipe and bought the ingredients to make some mango jelly cakes.
The recipe was a disaster as far as being easy to follow went. There are three parts to it:
- making the cakes
- making the jelly
- making mango cream to go into the finished product
I like to prioritise my cooking so that things are done in the most sensible order. To me, that order is:
- make the jelly (because it takes time to cool down enough before you can dip the cakes into it)
- make the cakes
- make the mango cream
It got the whole thing arse about, and instead of separating the ingredients for each step, it mashed them altogether into a confusing jumble.
Here's my easy way of doing it.
The jelly
But a tin of mango and a packet of mango jelly.
When you open the tin, it should contain 4 mango cheeks. Drain them and throw all four cheeks lot into a blender or food processor. You can keep the syrup if you like.
Boil 1.25 cups of water, pour it into a bowl and throw the mango jelly into it. Stir to dissolve the jelly. Put a sieve over the bowl and force HALF your blended mango through it. This will ensure you don't have any lumpy or stingy bits in the jelly. If you like sweet jelly, pour in some syrup. You will have left over jelly afterwards that you can set in the fridge. Mix your sieved mango and jelly together and stick it in the fridge.
You don't want the jelly to set hard - you want it to set slightly so that it's not all runny and liquidy, but just a bit thickened.
The cakes.
Turn your oven on and set to 180 degrees.
Go find a friand tray and grease the holes with butter. Don't use margarine - this batter sticks with margarine.
Stick 10gm of butter into a small bowl and pour 2 tablespoons of hot water in as well.
You can do this next part with an electric hand mixer or a food processor with beaters. I used a hand mixer.
Crack two eggs into a bowl. Beat them for 10 minutes with the hand mixer. Yes, that's a long time to stand around beating eggs - this is why you could use a food processor instead. I let one of the kids take over at the 5 minute mark and ended up with egg sprayed over half the kitchen.
After 10 minutes, slowly tip 1/3 cup of sugar into the eggs as you are beating them. Don't bung it all in at once - do it slowly. Continue beating until the sugar has dissolved.
Remove the beaters. Get a sifter and sift 1/2 cup of self raising flour and 2 teaspoons of cornflour into your egg/sugar mix. Fold that into the egg/sugar without beating the living daylights out of it.
Fold in the butter/water mix I told you about earlier. Don't beat the crap out of the batter! Be gentle and don't over mix.
Put a spoonful of the mix into each friand hole. The mix will rise, so don't fill the holes level with the tray or it will overflow a lot. Fill to below the lip.
Bake for 12 minutes. Or if you have a crap oven like me, back for 16 minutes.
When you put them in the oven, find a wire rack. Put a sheet of baking paper on top of it. Leave it on the benchtop.
After 12 or 16 minutes, pull your cakes out of the oven and immediately tip them onto the baking paper on the wire rack. Or, if you used margarine to grease the tray, use a knife to lever them out.
Dipping the cakes
If your fridge is like mine, and you were pretty quick at making the cakes, your jelly won't be quite ready yet. Check it anyway. Bugger off for a while and mow the lawn or something. Let the cakes cool and the jelly set. Just don't fall asleep on the couch. If the jelly sets, you're stuffed.
When you are ready, grab a flat bowl and put lots of shredded coconut in it. Give the cakes a good dipping in the jelly - if you let the jelly set too much like I did, they won't absorb enough jelly. But not too much dipping, or they will disintegrate.
Roll them in the coconut. I use my right hand to dip and put them in the bowl, and my left hand (which is dry and clean of jelly) to get more coconut out of the coconut container and sprinkle on the top side of the cakes - because you never put enough coconut in first time.
Put the finished cakes on a tray and put them in the fridge for half an hour. DON'T START EATING THEM NOW. They'll be better in half an hour. Be patient. Stick the left over mango jelly in the fridge to set properly.
The cream
Clean your beaters, find another bowl and whip 300ml of cream. Find the other half of the mango you pulverised and stir it through the cream. You can also finely chop half the mango instead of blending it if you want a chunkier cream. The mango cream is delicious. DO NOT EAT ALL THE CREAM BEFORE THE CAKES ARE READY.
Finishing them off
Chop the cakes in half, bung some mango cream in the middle and put the two halves back together. Then scoff. I find chopping them in half to be really difficult - mine just don't want to cut cleanly. You can always just spread a dollop of cream on top and eat them that way. When you run out of cakes, eat the left over mango jelly. With mango cream on top if you like.
Afterwards
Ride 132 miles to work all that off.
6 comments:
You need to describe how to lick the cream without damaging your tongue on the mixer thingy
Option number 2: Buy a sugared concoction at the local convenience store and stuff into face.
Drive truck 132 miles to make money, carefully easing around bike riders lest they be squashed.
I usually turn them off before licking.
'Usually'. Love your understatement.
Today I made chocolate mousse. As the recipe is easy and delicious and I can still remember it here it is:
Ingredients: 1 egg white, 50 g sugar, 300 ml double cream, 100 g dark chocolate (70 per cent cocoa or above), 2 tablespoons Amaretto liquer.
Method: 1) Boil half of the cream on the stove then remove from heat and stir in the chocolate, which you will have prepared by breaking/chopping into small pieces. 2) Place chocolate mixture in a bowl, which you then place in a larger bowl filled with ice water. Mix in the remaining cream and the Amaretto liquer. Beat this until well mixed and you get to the 'soft-peak' stage. 3) Whisk the egg white until you reach the soft-peak stage. Add the sugar, a little bit at a time, whisking in each time - the mixture should now look smooth and shiny, like raw meringues. 4) Fold in the egg-white mixture with the chocolate mixture. THE MOUSSE IS DONE!
Gawwwd, next you'll be sharing Pav recipes, ladies! Boyo, didn't you forget to add half bottle o' rum?
Real Men Know How to Cook.... because that way Real Men get first dibs on the beaters and the spoons and the bowls and they get to swig the liquer while they're cooking as well as eat what happens when it's all cooked.
Anyway no need to swap a pav recipe. Egg whites + sugar + egg beater and you have the mixture, then you just bung it in the oven. That one is easy.
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