SAW Communications. - Mini Cakes & Pastries

Mini Cakes &
Pastries Sometimes a whole cake is just too much. Or having only one kind of cake on the table too boring. This pretty book of cake recipes is the perfect solution! Not only does it make it easy to prepare the perfect quantities of irresistible mini cakes and tartlets, delicious brownies, pastries, trendy cupcakes, macarons and whoopie pies, but also to provide wonderful variety on the table.
Whether a birthday, cake buffet, just a tasty bite to have with some coffee or a little gift for a friend, our mini-shaped treats will never fail to delight! Mini Cakes &
Pastries Naumann & Gbel Verlagsgesellschaft mbH,
a subsidiary of VEMAG Verlags- und Medien Aktiengesellschaft
Emil-Hoffmann-Strae 1, 50996 Cologne (Germany)
www.vemag-medien.de
Translation from German: Suzanne Kirkbright for SAW Communications, Dr. Sabine Werner, Mainz
Realisation of the English edition: SAW Communications, Dr. Sabine A. Werner, Mainz
Complete production: Naumann & Gbel Verlagsgesellschaft mbH
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-3-8155-8785-0 Picture credits Food Fotografie Michael Brauner: p.

Studio Klaus Arras: p. Cover photo: StockFood/Peter Cassidy TLC Fotostudio: all other photos

Introduction What sweet treats should you offer your friends at coffee time? Is a whole cake too much or not versatile enough and a little boring?
Youll be delighted with our wide variety of mini cakes and gateaux! Choose from tempting tartlets, delicious brownies, pastry swirls and slices or trendy cupcakes, macarons and whoopie pies.
Enjoy a host of coffee-time treats! Practical baking tips Our recipes are presented with helpful step-by-step instructions and each one is beautifully illustrated with a photo. Your baking sessions are made easy. But why doesnt yeast dough rise occasionally? Why does short-crust pastry start crumbling? And why doesnt egg yolk whisk until its foamy or frothy? Weve compiled some practical tips to reveal a few baking secrets. Baking times You should keep to our suggested baking times. Cakes and especially cookies and biscuits can often look soft and pale in the oven, but once theyve cooled down they can become brittle.

If you leave them in the oven for too long, they will go hard, dark and bitter. Basic meringue The secret to meringue is getting clear egg white without traces of yolk. It turns nice and stiff when beaten now is the time to add the sugar! You should continue beating until the sugar crystals have dissolved. Berries Always wash and then drain the berries. Now, you can clean them. If you clean them first, the fruit can absorb the water.

This releases juice and reduces the aromatic content of the berries. Egg yolk To ensure that egg yolk and sugar turn a creamy consistency and become a delicious pale yellow colour, check that your whisk and mixing bowl are entirely fat-free. Egg white To make sure that you get a good basic meringue mixture from beaten egg white, you should be extra careful to separate the eggs properly. If the mixture contains just a tiny amount of yolk, the egg whites will not stiffen. Meringue is super quick to make if the egg whites, whisk and mixing bowl are chilled and a pinch of salt or a few droplets of lemon juice are added to the egg white. Yeast dough If you follow a few basic steps making yeast dough is simple.

Keep all the ingredients at room temperature. Remember to take the eggs and butter out of the fridge early. The milk should always be heated, ideally it should be lukewarm and not too hot. When all the ingredients have been combined, you should also remember to cover the pastry dough with a damp kitchen towel and set the mixture aside in a warm place free of draughts. Yeast dough also keeps well overnight in the refrigerator and the baked pastries are suitable for freezing, too. Leave the fresh pastries to cool and immediately place in a freezer bag in the freezer compartment.

Gently defrost the pastries before eating you can also warm them quickly in the oven.

Short-crust pastry It isnt that difficult to make perfect pastry. Make sure the butter is chilled when mixing together with the flour, sugar, a pinch of salt and egg. Nothing can go wrong now! Remember: knead the pastry until it becomes a uniform mass the dough should be firm and not crumbly! Then, leave the pastry to stand for about 30 minutes. Before baking in the cake form or before adding the filling, pierce the pastry several times with a fork. This prevents the pastry from forming air bubbles.

You can avoid this by blind baking cover the pastry with baking parchment and add baking beans to weigh it down.

Sponge mixture A perfect sponge is easy to make. Be patient and use the ingredients at room temperature. This is the secret to combining the ingredients well. Also, slowly add the eggs one at a time to make the creamed butter and sugar light and fluffy. Blend each egg carefully with the butter before adding another egg.

As soon as you add the flour and baking powder to the mixture, you should quickly put the cake in the oven. Nuts Nuts and almonds have a high fat content and can easily turn rancid. Dont keep too many nuts to ensure they do not go bad. Always store nuts in a cool, dry and airtight container. If you grind the nuts yourself, always do so directly before use: ground nuts go rancid even more quickly than whole nuts!

So go ahead! Dust off the rolling pin and enjoy baking lots of delicious cakes. 20 minutes (plus baking time) Makes 10 150 g butter 125 g sugar 1 sachet vanilla sugar 2 eggs 300 g flour 2 tsp baking powder 1 sachet vanilla blancmange powder grated zest of unwaxed lemon 5 tbsp milk 150 g mocha chocolate 4 tbsp coffee liqueur Beat the butter with the sugar and vanilla sugar until the mixture becomes light and fluffy. 20 minutes (plus baking time) Makes 10 150 g butter 125 g sugar 1 sachet vanilla sugar 2 eggs 300 g flour 2 tsp baking powder 1 sachet vanilla blancmange powder grated zest of unwaxed lemon 5 tbsp milk 150 g mocha chocolate 4 tbsp coffee liqueur Beat the butter with the sugar and vanilla sugar until the mixture becomes light and fluffy.

Beat in the eggs well. Mix the flour and vanilla blancmange powder and beat into the mixture. Fold in the lemon zest and milk. Pre-heat the oven to 200 C (Gas Mark 6, fan oven 180 C). Line a baking tray with parchment. For each cookie, put one heaped tablespoon of mixture on the baking tray.

Leave plenty of space between the cookies because the dough doubles in diameter when baking. Bake on the middle shelf for approx. 15 minutes until light brown. Take care not to let the cookies become too brown otherwise they will go dry. Melt the mocha chocolate over a bain-marie and stir in the coffee liqueur. Coat the flat side of the cookies with the chocolate.

Tip: A marbled effect with white and dark chocolate also looks appetising: melt the different chocolates separately. Coat the cookies half with white and half with dark chocolate, then use a fork to create the marbling effect. Cinnamon pretzels