Cake Roll with Mango Curd, Whipped Cream and Chopped Strawberries

Guess who went strawberry picking the other day..


Even in the 95 degree weather picking was the easy part. These keep for but a few days. Hence the next few posts will revolve around these ruby red lovelies. And as I keep telling my friends...Strawberry desserts for a month....:)

The first in the series is a simple roll cake flavored with a thin layer of mango curd, sprinkled with little bits of fresh strawberries, then topped with sweetened whipped cream and rolled up to sweet perfection.

Sheet Cake(The recipe comes from Nick Malgieri's Perfect Cakes and Epicurious, May 2009)
3 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
Pinch of salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup cake flour (spoon flour into dry-measure cup and level off)
1/4 cup cornstarch (spoon flour into dry-measure cup and level off)

Mango curd

Whipped cream
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar

First thing's first. Position the rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Butter or coat a jelly roll pan with vegetable spray. The pan I used was 12 x 17 x 2 inches.


Line with parchment paper and then spray the paper. If using butter, butter both pan and paper. You do not want this cake to stick.


Measure cake flour by first scooping into a measuring cup and sift flour into a separate bowl. 

Then spoon the sifted flour into measuring cup. If you do not precisely measure the sifted flour this cake will give you trouble.


Here's a picture of how much extra sifted flour I had left after measuring into my cup.
 

Enough about four. Now onto eggs. Take eggs in a large enough bowl. After beating the volume will increase by 3 fold. So you need room for that.


Add sugar.


Whisk away over a pot of simmering water till the mixture reaches 100 degrees. A quick way to check this is to gently test the egg sugar mixture. you should not be able to feel the gritty sugar when you rub the mixture between fingers. It'll also be about body temperature. If you go higher you will get scrambled eggs. So stop when you feel that the mixture is hot. Or as an alternative use a kitchen thermometer.


Whip on medium-high speed until the egg mixture is cooled (touch the outside of the bowl to tell) and tripled in volume. The egg foam will start off yellowish and very thin.


But it'll start getting thicker.


And thicker.


And thicker.


You are done when it forms a slowly dissolving ribbon falling back onto the bowl of whipped eggs when the whisk is lifted.


Gently fold in sifted cake flour and corn starch mixture.


Only mix till you can't see flour anymore. Do not over mix or your batter will lose volume.


Pour into the prepared pan.


Bake for 10-12 minutes. Take out when the cake starts pulling away from the sides like so.


Flip onto another piece of parchment paper. The bottom is now the top.


Peel off the parchment and cool on a cooling rack.


Almost there now. Just a bit longer. Chop up strawberries and whip up heavy cream with sugar.


After the cake has cooled down completely spoon mango curd onto the cake.


In a nice thin layer.

Sprinkle strawberries.

Spread whipped cream.


Spread it out.


Roll it up tightly and chill in the fridge for atleast half an hour.


Sprinkle some icing sugar on top.
 

And enjoy. :) 

Mango Curd

A very basic recipe that makes a silky smooth mango curd. Different fruit purees can be used.
Possibilities. Endless...

The recipe has been modified from Bon Appetit, June 1998 and Smittenkitchen

1 cup mango puree/pulp (I used the canned pulps available in Indian grocery stores)
6 yolks from large eggs
4 tablespoons of sugar
3 tablespoon lime juice
2 tablespoon butter

Place everything except butter in a metal bowl


Whisk together to mix everything up.


Set bowl over a pot of simmering water making sure the bottom does not touch the water.


Whisk and after about 20 minutes the curd will start to thicken. Once it starts thickening keep whisking otherwise there will be lumps and bye-bye silky smoothness.


Whisk until curd thickens and reaches 170 degrees F. In the absence of a kitchen thermometer thicken till it clings to your whisk.
Cool and preserve in a jar of your choice. Keeps well for up-to two weeks in the fridge.


Can be spread on scones, bread, used as a filling for cakes, tartlets, and swiss rolls. Check back soon to see how I use it up. :)

Cheery cherry chutney

I love cherries..

Who doesn’t?

Sadly though, cherry season doesn’t last very long. Unlike berries that you can find in any super market throughout the year cherries are only there for a few months. As much as I love to eat these beauties by themselves sometimes I crave just a little bit more. I had a bag of cherries sitting around in my kitchen for a few days and decided to make chutney out of it. This way I can make them last just a bit longer. I call this my "cheery cherry chutney" because it’s a glorious combination of sweet, spicy and sour . It takes me to my happy place.

The hardest part about this recipe would be pitting the cherries which I did using the chopstick method. I made x marks with a knife and pushed the pit out using a chopstick. Simply cut an x on the bottom of the cherries and push out the pit from the top using a chop stick.  You can also make life easier and smash the cherries much like you’d smash a garlic clove. You’ll be mashing them up in the pot anyways. But being me this did not occur to me till I was done pitting the entire batch. 

So here's how to make it.

1 c of pitted cherries

1/2 c apple cider vinegar

1/4 c brown sugar

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 dried red chilies

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp fennel seeds

First you heat up the oil and temper the dry spices(mustard, dried red chillies, fennel seeds) in oil till the mustard starts to splatter and dance in the oil.

After the seeds start crackling add all the other ingredients quickly as you don’t want the mustard seeds to burn. If the seeds get burnt it gives off a bitter taste which we don’t want for the chutney.

After that you add all the other ingredients and give it a quick stir.

It’ll look very watery at this point. Cover and let it simmer on medium heat for a good 20 minutes and it’ll dry up real good.

After it’s dried up you cool it in the pan and bottle it up.

It’ll last for a few weeks in the fridge. Chutneys are very versatile. You can smear them on toast. You can savor them with rice and daal or with roasted chicken. Or my favorite, you can enjoy it simply by itself.