passover week 2022 - strawberry and cream cakes

passover week 2022 - strawberry and cream cakes

• 27 Mar 2022

Yes these may look very familiar because I made the non Passover version last year. The non-P cakes barely rose and contained such a small amount of flour I knew they could be easily converted to a Passover friendly version. 

 

 

To make up for the lack of raising agent, I separated the eggs and used the beaten egg whites to lighten the batter. That made the baked cakes a bit more delicate than their non-P counterparts but I don't think that's a bad thing. As you can't buy kosher for Passover cream cheese here, I went with a simple vanilla bean flavoured whipped cream topping.

Here’s the recipe for you which makes 6 small cakes. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

 

 

Passover strawberry and cream cakes – makes 6  adapted from here

Cake 

60g Passover baking mix (equal quantities Potato starch and superfine matzo meal)

¼ tsp sea salt flakes

70g almond meal

125g unsalted butter at room temperature, plus extra for greasing

125g caster sugar 

1 tsp finely grated lemon rind

1 tsp vanilla essence 

2 eggs, separated

40-60mls milk

100g strawberries, washed hulled and cut into 1 cm dice sprinkled with 2 tsp caster sugar

Topping 

250mls cream

Seed of ½ a vanilla bean

1 tbs caster sugar

3 strawberries, halved lengthways

Method

Preheat the oven to 180ºC conventional. Grease and line the base of 6 Texas muffin tins with baking paper. Dust with superfine matzo meal. 

Sift the baking mix into a bowl and then stir in the salt and the almond meal. Set to one side.

Place the butter, sugar, lemon rind and vanilla in a large bowl and beat with a wooden spoon or hand mixer until light and creamy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl to ensure even mixing. Don’t worry if it looks a little curdled at this stage, it will come together again later. 

Add the sifted dry ingredients in three batches, alternating with enough milk to make a smooth batter. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a flexible spatula to make sure the batter is evenly mixed. In a clean dry bowl whip the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gently fold in the egg whites followed by the diced strawberries.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tins, levelling the tops with a small metal spatula or spoon to ensure they are smooth and even. The batter should come about three-quarters of the way up the sides of the tin. Place the muffin tin on the middle shelf of the preheated oven and bake for 25 minutes or until the cakes are golden and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cakes comes out clean.

 

 

Remove the tin from the oven then run a knife around the cakes. The cakes are delicate so allow the cakes to cool for 15 minutes before easing the cakes out of the moulds with a small knife or an offset spatula. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.

 

Topping

Whip the cream with the vanilla seeds until soft peaks form then sweeten to taste. Spoon or decoratively pipe the cream onto the top of the cakes. Place the halved strawberries on top of each mini cake, pressing just lightly to embed them into the cream. Any leftovers will keep, refrigerated, for up to two days.

 

These were just as tasty as their non-P version and disappeared in a thrice.

That's the last bake for Passover Week 2022. I'll see you all again next week with a little something for Easter.

Bye for now,

Jillian