My birthday cake! or, Adventures in gateau de crepes

-
So my birthday is on Wednesday, but we were going to have friends over tonight for gaming* so I decided I'd have my birthday cake today. I was trying to figure out what sort of cake I wanted this year, so I perused my new favorite food blog, Smitten Kitchen, and came up with this: gateau de crepes. Now, a gateau de crepes is just what it sounds like -- a cake made of crepes, layered with pastry cream. I have nothing against traditional cakes, but my birthday is an opportunity to try something new in desserts, and I like crepes, and I really like pastry cream, and so what the heck! Gateau de crepes it is.

So, the first thing I learned about gateau de crepe is that this is not a one day cake. Like many things in French cooking, nothing is hard, but there's a lot of little steps. In this case, I started on Saturday making the crepe batter and the pastry cream (as both have to sit overnight). On Sunday, with my friend Cheyenne's help, we moved to assembly.

So, the idea of this is that you make 20 crepes, and stack them, with about a quarter cup of pastry cream on top of each one (the pastry cream itself being lightened with whipped sweetened cream to be fluffy). Off to the right you can see one of the crepes being made. Cheyenne actually knows how to make crepes decently, so she offered to work that station while I handled cream and cake assembly.


What you see off to the left is me spreading cream on what I think is about the sixth crepe in the stack.







And then we have something like the 12th crepe -- it's starting to look like a cake! The crepe on the plate by itself was a contender for Prettiest Crepe, which is the one you put on top.



And then getting close to done! It's a little lopsided here, but it's squishy so you can gentle push it back to vertical and it will stay. 



Et voila! The finished cake!

Now, what you do with it, since that seems a bit simplistic if delicious, is it has to sit in the fridge overnight and firm up and sort of meld, and then you sprinkle sugar on the top crepe and brulee it, and then you slice it like a cake. I am very excited about this. So excited, in fact, that I needed to share it with all of you! Hooray birthday cake! 

*Of course, Snowpocalypse means no gaming tonight, so argh. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Timewatch: Session Five

-
Leaving last session's dinner party, the group heads back to the Citadel for a quick regroup and identity change before leaping forward in time. They return to London in May 1930 at a swanky party that HRH Prince Edward is attending, where in theory he meets Wallis and her then-husband, Ernest Simpson.  Caroline and Jason keep the same personas, and thus are recognized by the people they met at the weekend in the country. Freda in particular seems very interested in Caroline and invites her to stay at her house, determined to find her a suitable husband and keep her around. Caroline, who is likewise interested in Freda, maintains her cool, keeping the conversation open.  Solomon acts as a photographer at the party, documenting and seeing how the crowd interacts. He's the observer, looking for things that might be out of place.  Micah's persona is very much himself, but as a captain after the WWI who stayed in England. He's a fish out of water a bit, but can p
Read more

Timewatch, Session Four.

-
So after a significant RL hiatus, we picked up at the dinner party, reconvening after tea and rest to embark on the dinner portion of the evening. Things that were learned: 1) Prince Edward is bored and has a roving eye for married women. His relationship with Freda Dudley Howe is waning, and he's getting interested in Lady Thelma Furness. This is as it should be in 1930. 2) Prince Edward thinks that war is awful and should be avoided at any cost. He also thinks he has something to offer England and that the king should be thoroughly in charge, with a lot more power than his father chooses to wield. Also, he really likes Germany. 3) No one has heard of Wallis Simpson. She should be living in London about now with her husband Ernest. and they should meet Prince Edward in a few months at a party in town. 4) None of the women except Lady Anastasia, Lord Mountbatten's wife, seem to have any real affection for their husbands, and Anastasia is much more focused on her life as
Read more

Timewatch: Session Six!

-
Going by Wallis's reported date of death, the team showed up in 1924 a few days early, trying to get ahead of the time split (which they did). Solomon hung back at the Citadel for a moment/day/ever -- time travel tends to make that sort of distinction meaningless (their player was out). The team staked out her house and started looking for ways to find interference/figure out exactly when the event would take place. Micah starts off with his disguise as a groundskeeper at the Spencer household (she's still married to her first husband at this point). He sees a chauffeur working on the car outside the garage in back of the house, so he wanders over and starts a conversation. He has a pleasant talk with the driver, with the result that he learns there's going to be a party on Friday and the driver isn't needed to stay and wait. He also learns that her husband is gone for quite long intervals and is not terribly close with his wife.  Caroline, in the meantime, pays
Read more