Yo Joe

Cake On My Face is one T O D A Y boiiiiiiiii !! Happy Birthday to us! lol my nose and your arm got a bit of a camio.

Wow, big moment. We have a bigger family than we did a year ago, more than two readers actually (mum, dad, I’m lookin at you). Let’s give our hundreds of readers some reviews of our birthday cake; ‘Really good‘ – Mum. ‘The texture of the cake with the cream is really good‘ – Joe. Brilliant, that concludes our review section.

I know you would’ve preferred a chocolate birthday cake Joe but there is a big Chocolate Orange cake coming soon on here and I got in my head that I wanted to recreate the ricotta cake I made for mum’s last birthday. It was a peng cake creation but I didn’t write down how I made it, so it’s sort of remained a mystery cake. Well, I have recreated it for us, and this time I wrote down the recipe.

This cake is really good on its own, dust it with some icing sugar and it’s a moist and buttery dream. But the rhubarb cream is really beautiful with this cake, lil bit tart, lil bit sweet and paired with the cake it’s a rich, light and buttery combo. I’ll explain my thinkin behind the rhubarb cream. I’m not a huge fan of buttercream on cake if it isn’t chocolate or creamcheese based, so rhubarb buttercream wasn’t gunna happen. I was looking through some old baking books and every single cake in the book, other than muffins, was called a gateau. Lemon gateau, chocolate gateau, blueberry gateau, passionfruit gateau, tropical gateau (by tropical they meant mango)… replace the word ‘gateau’ with ‘cake’ and that’s pretty much what they were. Thought this really elevated the vibe of the cake. I worked out the gateau component of the cake was cream. No cream, Cake. Cream, Gateau. Instead of buttercream or icing, they covered their cake layers with a flavoured double (heavy) cream. So I made us a Gateau for our birthday.

My instructions on how to ice the cake are pretty lacking, so here is an informative picture guide detailing how I ice cakes.

This cake will keep in the fridge for about 3 days, so eat it fast!

Ingredients

For 2 round 8inch Ricotta Cakes

• 125g unsalted butter, softened
• 200g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 150g ricotta cheese
• 20g (1 tablespoon) milk
• 50g wholemeal flour
• 150g plain flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

For The Rhubard Sauce – can be made up to a week in advance, just keep it covered maybe?

• 200g rhubarb, chopped into small pieces
• 50g sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cornflour or plain flour

For The Cream

• 600ml double cream
• a splash of milk

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 / 160 fan oven. Grease and line two 8 inch round cake tins.

Cream the butter, sugar, vanilla and salt for 3 mins until pale and fluffy, it’s easiest to use electric beaters here but you can also use a wooden spoon. Add 50g of the plain flour and one egg. Beat together to incorporate. Add the other two eggs, one at a time, beating to combine until you have a glossy and fluffy batter.

Mix the ricotta and milk in a small bowl and set aside. In a separate bowl (sorry, washing up, but it’s worth it), sift in the remaining flours, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon, adding back any bran from the wholmeal flour that the sieve collected.

To the batter, add the flour mixture in three goes and ricotta in two, beating inbetween each addition, starting and ending with flour. Pour the batter into the prepared tins and bake for 50/55 mins, until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool completely before icing.

For the rhubarb cream. Add the rhubarb, sugar and a splash of water to a small sacupan. Heat on medium, until the fruit softens and bubbles (about 4 mins). You may need to help it by mashing it a bit.

With a whisk at hand, add the flour and whisk quite quickly to make sure the flour doesn’t clump. It’s fine if it does, no one is gunna see with all the cream. Once the flour has been incorporated, let the mixture bubble for another 10 mins or so. It’s best to watch and whisk this for the 10 mins because it’s not much fruit so it can burn easily.

Once the mixture is thicked and reduced pour onto a plate and allow to cool completely (about an hour and a half).

When the rhubarb sauce is cooled put it in a large bowl and gradually whisk in the cream. Once all the cream is incorporated add in the milk (not to much). If you’re worried this cream won’t be able to hold up the cake, dont worry, it will, it’s pretty sturdy stuff. Because the rhubarb is acidic, it thickens the cream so you won’t have to whisk this as long to get it thick enough to ice the cake. Keep whisking, either by hand or with an electric whisk, until the cream holds a stiff peak when you lift the whisk out the batter. Keep the cream covered in the fridge until you are ready to ice the cake.

Fill and cover the cake with the cream. If you want this really neat, you can trim the cake to get a flat top and even sides before you ice it. Give a generous amount of cream for the middle, sandwich the other cake on top and spread the whole thing with the remaining cream. Stick in a candle, call it a gateau and sing happy birthday.

Happy Birthday to us. Love Caitlin x