Saturday 20 May 2017

No-bake Strawberry Cake


Ingredients 


600g low-fat Mascarpone cheese 
300g low fat reach tea biscuits - crushed into small pieces
 dried apricots to taste - cut into small pieces
approx 1 dark chocolate - small pieces 
strawberries to taste halved 
1 gelatine + 1 berry fruits jelly

Method   



Prepare the gelatine and put it on the side (I was a bit sceptical about using gelatine as I tried it before and I hated the smell). Mix the Mascarpone cheese, crushed biscuits and the dried apricots then add the gelatine. Cut the strawberries in half and set hem aside for later. 


Put 1/3 of the mixture into the cake tin then add some chocolate, then add another layer of cheese mixture then chocolate, then add the last layer of mixture. Put it in the fridge to rest for 30-40 min. In the meantime prepare the berry fruit jelly. 



Get the cake from the fridge, add the halved strawberries and the jelly. Ta-da! Well, this is how it was supposed to happen, but nothing is straightforward in Teodora's cooking world and I just didn't know what to do with the jelly (to all experienced cooks out there - please don't laugh!). So I arranged the strawberries upside down in a separate recipient and poured the jelly on top and put it in the fridge. When set, I just transferred it from the recipient to the top of my cake. It was s bit of a mess, but the cake tasted very good considering that I didn't put any sweetener (I don't know if you've noticed). 

Notes to self


-Don't presume that if you use biscuits and dried fruit your cake will be sweet; it won't. Luckily, it was delicious, but next time I will replace the apricots with dates as the latter are much sweeter and I might add some kind of sweetener too.
-Learn how to use gelatine properly so it sets as seen in pictures.
-Buy a taller cake tin so the cake will look tidier plus, you might be able to pour the jelly on top to set.
-Break the chocolate into smaller pieces and try different varieties. While I love dark chocolate, I think that for a cake, a sweeter one would be more appropriate.

What do you think; will you try it? I definitely will and I might try different fruits on top. 

4 comments:

  1. You could try grating the chocolate maybe, that might spread it more evenly. Maybe you could include raisins or sultanans as well if you want to stick with the apricots too, they are very sweet aren't they?
    I look forward to hearing about your variations, when you try it again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a good idea, I will grate the chocolate next time! I also find that dates are quite sweet (especially when you don't want to use sugar) but I didn't have any this time, so I put what I had in my stash :).

      Delete