Detailed Recipe to make Vanilla & Fruit Pastry at home.
Prep Time1 hourhr
Cook Time40 minutesmins
Total Time1 hourhr40 minutesmins
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: Continental Indian
Servings: 4
Author: Sonal Gupta @ simplyvegetarian777
Ingredients
Vanilla Cake / Pastry Ingredients
All purpose flour / Maida - 1 cup
Baking powder - 1/2 tsp
Baking soda - 1/2 tsp
Heavy Cream / Malai - 1 cup
Castor sugar - 3/4 cup
Eggs - 3at room temperature
Vanilla Essence - 1 tsp or 1 vanilla bean scraped
Whipped Cream Frosting
Heavy Cream - 1 cup
Powdered Sugar - 1&1/2 tbsp
Vanilla Essence - 1/2 tsp
Other Pastry Ingredients
Strawberries - 1/2 cupchopped fine tossed in 1 tbsp powdered sugar
Pineapple slices - few small
Pineapple Juice - 1/4 cup or 1/4 cup mix of cold milk + 1 tbsp powdered sugar
Instructions
Cake Recipe
Preheat the oven at 350*F/180*C. Prepare a 9 inches wide cake loaf pan by greasing it nicely with butter from all the sides.
Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda. Set aside.
Blend together the powdered sugar + heavy cream + vanilla essence and beat for about 2 minutes on medium speed.
Add the eggs one at a time and blend for another 3 minutes.
Fold in the all purpose flour/maida with a fork or spatula, till well incorporated .
Pour into the well greased cake loaf pan, level it out with a butter knife and bake for 30-35 minutes, till the tooth pick comes out clean .
Take it out of the oven. Let it rest for 5-7 minutes in the pan. Then run a knife lightly around the edges. Turn it out gently and set on the cooling rack to cool at the room temperature. Let it cool completely.
Making the Whipped Cream Frosting
Chill these in the freezer for 12-15 minutes - the bowl that you will whip the heavy cream in, the whisk or the blades of electric beater and the heavy cream.
Now take out all of these from the freezer. Add heavy cream and powdered sugar to the chilled bowl. Beat on low speed for about 2 minutes and then beat further for 3 minutes till the cream starts making ribbon like tracks. Refer to the video link posted above.
You can prepare the frosting beforehand and refrigerate till ready to use.
Creating the Vanilla & Fruits Pastry
Trim the cooled cake loaf from the edges and top to get a clean rectangular loaf. Do not over trim. After trimming, it will be about 8 inches wide.
Cut the cake loaf into 4 equal portions, of about 2 inches wide each.
Now slice each cake piece into 2 equal slices horizontally.
Pour good amount of pineapple juice or sweetened milk over all the pieces to avoid drying of the cake.
Apply a thick layer of whipped cream on each bottom layer.
Top with chopped strawberries.
Place the top slices of the cake. Spread thick & even layer of whipped cream frosting evenly on the top slices.
Place strawberries and pineapple slices on top.
Handling the pastries
These are dainty pastries, so to avoid dropping or smudging, do this - cut 4 rectangles of butter/parchment paper, bigger than the pastry size and place each pastry in the middle of the paper. Carefully lift from the side and place in a cake box and refrigerate till ready to use.
Notes
You may other fruits like kiwi and other berries. You may add fruit jam in the middle layer instead of whipped cream frosting. There are so many possibilities with this basic recipe.