I haven't been baking sweet treats much lately, because I have been experimenting with sour dough, I have got the starter sussed but I have had mixed results with the proving time; but that's another story for another blog post. For now I want to show you the cake and small tartlets I made.
The cake is a basic chocolate sandwich cake, filled with raspberries and vanilla buttercream, (rather a lot of buttercream in fact, one might say too much).
What do you think, too much?
What's that, you need a closer look? OK ...
I purposely used fresh fruit rather than jam, believing the raspberries would cut through the rich chocolate sponge and the buttercream, they did!
On to the tarts, I have had a bash at making something like these before, which you can see
here. I was inspired by those fancy, beautifully composed treats you see in a patisserie and little pile of tins I bought whilst on honeymoon in a St Ives charity shop.
I used a different pastry recipe this time, the same as I used for my Lemon Meringue pie by
Dan Lepard (he writes for the Guardian). It just sweet enough and very workable after chilling.
Instead of filing them with creme patissiere, I made some chantilly cream, which is double cream, flavoured with vanilla and icing sugar.
I used fresh raspberries and kiwi fruit to decorate.
That's all!
