My Food Geek

Last week, the eater invited me to her bridge potluck party. She requested that I make a dessert to bring along, since that’s what I seem to do. She gave me one day’s notice so I had to be resourceful. Luckily, for me, I had a chiffon cake in the freezer that just needed a filling and some decorations. I wasn’t happy with just that, so I offered up a bonus dessert of Swedish Profiteroles.

Everyone seems to like profiteroles. Light, airy, filled with cream; how could they be any better? The Swedish variety is topped off with a small disc of short dough before they are cooked. The end result is an even crispier, sweetened top, and an interesting look and texture. They have the added benefit of not needing to be glazed so they were perfect. Bake and fill, it couldn’t have been any easier.

I’m never happy just making any old pastries, so I had to spice things up a bit. I decided I would fill both the cake and the pastries with what my pastry teacher would have called, “quick diplomat cream”; I called it pastry cream and whipped cream mixed. The filling works out quite well, stiff enough to be a decent cake filling without needing any gelatin to hold the works up, and just sweet enough to compliment the rest of the cake; it also works well as a profiterole filling, too!

The cake needed a few extra touches: jam, soaking syrup, fruit, and a marzipan covering. While I like the looks of rolled fondant, the stuff tastes terrible and I never like seeing people strip my cakes nekkid before they eat them. Marzipan, on the other hand, has a pleasant almond flavor with a hint of rosewater and it actually tastes good. I finished the cake off with some fresh fruit, some marzipan spheres, and a marzipan ribbon and button. The eater dubbed it the White Button Cake.