Hungarian Food Guide: Punch Cake

Hey Guys! :)

Happy New Year, to all of You!

I will continue baking this year, too, so I hope you will stay with me, so we can share more recipes and goodies with each other.

Today I brought a Punch Cake, do you have another name for it? I don't know, if it is right, it refers to the punch drink with rum, not the punching movement. Like I would cry if somebody would use my cake to punch in the face....

I baked this cake for one of my favourite teachers who requested it to her family. I am so glad they liked it, if it wasn't the case I wouldn't post it now. :D

I even made a video of the decorating part! Watch it! :)

Ingredients:

14 eggs

280 g of sugar

350 g of flour

1 tbsp of baking powder

candied orange peel

500 g of sugar

2 dl of water

rasped lemon/orange peel

1 dl of baking rum

peach jam

pink food color

sugar flower paste, sugar pearls (optional)

Preparation

1. Start with baking sponge cakes. You can separate the mixture into two baking molds, but at least one of them should be circle shaped, so that it would have a cake figure.
(I baked a pink flat sponge, and cut heart shapes from it, I used them later on)

So divide the eggs, whisk the egg whites with some tbsp of sugar to get a nice foam. And whisk the egg yolks with the rest of the sugar. Then pour the half of the flour into the mixture, gently stir the egg foam in it, and then sift the flour and the baking powder in it. Stir the mixture gently. I even put candied orange peel in it, because it makes it even better. Bake them on 180 degree C, for 30 minutes, or if you bake flat sponge cakes 12-15 minutes is enough.

2. Imagine that you would cut the cake into 4 sheets. Now only cut the upper quarter, and the bottom part of the cake. Put them aside.

3. Cut the middle part and the other sponge(s) into little pieces.

4. Make a thick sugar syrup with the 500 g of sugar, 2 dl water, then add the rasped lemon peel and the rum to it.

5. Pour this syrup on the sponge pieces. This is the part when you can add food color to the mixture, or you can even bake colored sponges. You can use pink/red/yellow colors, but some pastry shops don't like the yellow in it, but it depends on you! :)

6. I like when the stuffing is soaky , wet, but it is also depends on your taste. Mix the sponge with the syrup with your hands.

7. Now fill the two sponge sheets with this stuffing. (I placed the little hearts now into the stuffing, as a special surprise). I lubricated peach jam on each layers, to stuck them together. And I used the bottom part of the sponge cake as the upper one, to have a nice flat surface.

8. Cover the top with peach jam. And smooth the sides with a spatula.

9. Let the flavors come together during a night, leave it in the fridge.

10. Next day, melt the fondan (but you can use sugar icing, too if you don't have fondan, or melt icing sugar with a little water, but here we use fondan in the pastry shops).
Melting fondan can be tricky, you shouldn't heat it much, as it can burn easily, above 60 degrees C it is unusable.
So, always measure it, or put your finger in it, if it is a little warmer then your body heat, take it off the flame.
During that you can add the food colors. (I used pink Wilton gel color)

11. Cover the cake with it, and smooth its surface with a spatula.
like in the video! ;)

12. Now the regular Punch cake is decorated like this one in the picture. SO it has stripes, and dots on it made with the same fondan.

But my teacher requested the "Happy Birthday" note and the names of the celebrated and some flowers on it.
13. So I made sugar flowers, roses, with sugar flower paste.

14. I wrote their names with big capital letters, as it was requested, so that the little child could read it.

When you bake a cake, baking 2 is not a big difference, so the same time I made a smaller cake for my family. So I can show you the cake in pieces.