Near my studio ‘La Maison Rose’ in SoHo Hong Kong, there are quite a number of unique destinations. One of them is Tai Ping Shan Street which I think is pretty hip and fun. There are a few interesting stores including this ‘take away only’ cake shop called ‘S Bakery by Mama Soo’. Amazing variety of cheesecakes Mama Soo baked. They all looked so good that cheesecake fans would find it impossible to resist. I am sure the shop is doing very well in normal circumstances but Mama Soo told me that the weather had been so hot recently and no one wanted to eat cheesecakes. So she would close the shop and go for a holiday and reopen on August 2. I told her that it was such a pity to close even for a little while and that would she ever consider baking something lighter and fruitier for the summer?
Mama Soo said no, she would rather stick with her signature cheesecakes. We then exchanged our Instagram accounts and I told her I would definitely return …
This year I did not have a summer break and decided to experiment with another fruity bake. All I needed to do was to look at my own Pinterest cake boards. After this, I chose a beautiful-looking blackberry jam cake from ‘Salt & Chocolate.com’.
For the ‘jam icing’, I could not find blackberry jam in my favourite supermarket so I substituted my own mixture of 80% blackcurrant and 20% raspberry jam.
Blackcurrant has a dark, dusty violet purple hue while raspberry is mauve red. Once mixed the colour becomes deep mauve red colour.
The amount of confectioner sugar also counts, more sugar means more white colour in the mix and the colour became lighter.
The colour result of my mix is shown here. Although not quite what I hoped for, it tasted very lovely and I am happy with that. Recipe Cake 1 cup of unsalted butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cup sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of baking soda
3 cups of cake flour
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
A pinch of salt
3/4 cup of sour cream
1 cup of blackberry preserves (do not use jelly)
Icing
1/2 cup of blackberry preserves
1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar.
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Spray a 12 cup Bundt cake pan with non-stick baking spray. In a bowl combine the flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda and set aside. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and scrape down the bowl after each egg. Add in the vanilla and beat until combined. Add 1/3 of the flour into the butter mixture alternating with 1/2 the sour cream beating after each addition. Fold in the blackberry preserves. Pour into the prepared pan and bake at 300 for 15 minutes then increase the heat to 350 and bake for 40-50. Or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes then turn it out onto a rack to cool completely.
Once cooled heat the 1/2 cup of blackberry preserves in a small saucepan until melted and then remove from the heat and stir in the powdered sugar. Do this to the consistency that you desire so you can use more or less of either ingredient.
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