Italian birthday cake
This has been my birthday cake for decades, and probably also a fixture of birthday parties for all the Italian kids my age. It is a classic sponge cake, sliced into three layers, soaked in alchermes, and filled with vanilla pastry cream and chocolate pastry cream.
Servings 8 people
Ingredients
For the sponge cake
- 4 eggs, at room temperature
- 180 grams (3/4 cups) sugar
- 100 grams (3/4 cups) cake flour
- 60 grams (1/2 cups) potato starch
- ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
- Zest ½ lemon
For the pastry cream
- 1 l (1 1/4 cups) fresh whole milk
- 240 grams (1 1/4 cups) sugar
- 80 grams (2/3 cups) corn starch
- 6 egg yolks
- 1/2 tablespoon vanilla essence
- 100 grams (3 1/2 oz) dark chocolate, chopped
To decorate the cake
- 200 grams (7 oz) savoiardi, ladyfingers
- 1 cup alchermes
- 1 cup water
- Swiss meringue buttercream
- Blackberries
Instructions
Make the sponge cake.
- Preheat oven to 175°C / 350°F and grease a 20cm/8in round springform pan with butter. Dust with flour and set aside.
- Whip the eggs with sugar for about ten minutes in a stand mixer or with your electric whisk until white and thick. They'll be ready when lifting the beaters, the batter will fall down, making a ribbon.
- Sift flour and potato starch in a bowl, then add the salt and the lemon zest. Fold the dry ingredients into the beaten eggs very gently with a spatula, making slow movements from the bottom upwards.
- Scrape the batter into the baking pan and bake for about 20 minutes, until golden and springy.
- Remove from the oven and after a few minutes unmould carefully the cake and let it cool completely on a wire rack.
- You can prepare it the day before and wrap it in aluminum foil until the next day.
Make the pastry cream
- Pour the milk into a saucepan. Heat the milk over medium heat and remove it from the heat as soon as it starts simmering.
- In another saucepan, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar and the corn starch and remove all the lumps. Slowly pour the hot milk in a thin stream over the egg yolks, stirring constantly with a whisk to prevent scrambled eggs. Add the vanilla essence.
- Put the saucepan over medium-low heat and stir constantly with a whisk. As soon as you spot the first bubbles and it starts to thicken into pastry cream, remove it from the heat and divide it into two bowls.
- Add the chopped dark chocolate into one bowl and whisk to melt it, until perfectly combined.
- Cover both bowls with cling film, cool them down in a bowl of iced water, then keep in the fridge until needed.
Finally, make the cake.
- Dilute the alchermes with water.
- When the sponge cake is completely cold, slice it into three equal disks.
- Brush the first disc with the alchermes and spread generously with the chocolate pastry cream. Arrange the second disc on top, brush it again with alchermes, and spread with the pastry cream. Top it with the third disc.
- Frost the cake with the Swiss meringue buttercream, then arrange the savoiardi all around the cake. Secure them with a ribbon. Decorate the cake with blackberries, then stash it in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Tried this recipe?We love to see your creations! Snap a pic and tag @julskitchen and hashtag it #myseasonaltable!
Notes
To make the Swiss meringue buttercream I followed Zoe Bakes’ recipe.