Receta Baking | Stone Fruit & Quark Mousse Layered Cake … refreshing summer cake #stonefruitlove
“Cake is happiness! If you know the way of the cake, you know the way of happiness!
If you have a cake in front of you, you should not look any further for joy!”
C. JoyBell C
Stone Fruit & Quark Mousse Layered Cake ... a light lemon scented sponge layered with a homemade quark cheese & cream filling. The filling taken to a delicious summery high with a stone fruit pie filling inspired by a recipe from Pioneer Woman. Turned out to be a fruity and delicious birthday cake!
Another birthday, another cake. Summer birthdays are a little bothersome. Humid summer birthdays even more. My dad’s birthday falls in July. If the heat isn’t bad enough, with the monsoons here too, the humidity threatens to play spoilsport. Nothing behaves. NOTHING! The only bright spot … cartloads of stone fruit!
The cream does not get whipped up. The double cream that I have bought locally disappointed once again. Thankfully I had made some quark the night before as I had this Quark Mousse Cake with Roasted Balsamic Strawberries in my head.
Quark adds a special yumminess to the cream filling. The slight undertones of tanginess of the curd cheese pair really well with stone fruit {and berries too}. I use quark a lot as you can see here. Now it makes me happy to see my friends and local food bloggers like Cookaroo and White Ramekins experiment with this very simple to make curd cheese.
I discovered a new stone fruit on the shelves this summer, actually only a day ago. It looks like a green plum, and I thought greengage maybe. But the guy at the bazaar muttered something quite inaudible like ‘pericosa‘. Googled forever and didn’t find anything. Leafed through one of my favourite cookbooks Fine Cooking In Season, and sure enough I found a listing under plums. The book is a wonderful reference on fresh produce in season. I’ve had it for 3 years and I turn to it often!
These are called Mariposa plums, and are being cultivated locally in Manali, nestled in the Kullu Valley in the Himalayas. So pretty and pretty delicious too, I couldn’t believe the deep red inside when I cut through one. Stunning!
So in they went as well into the bowl with the pitted cherries with a few regular plums, all having a blast together. You could just do a cherry pie filling if you like. Our cherry season is at its fag end even as peaches and plums flood the bazaar.
I added some Camisoni premium lemon extract to the sponge. Lemon and fruit pair really well. The deep aromatic extract added a lot of flavour to the sponges. Together the lemon sponge, quark mousse and stone fruit gave the Stone Fruit & Quark Mousse Layered Cake the refreshing feel of summer.
Which brings me to the winners of the Camisoni tip and tricks giveaway. Our three winners are Yasmin, Andrea and Sangeeta. Will mail you soon for your mailing address! Congratulations to the three of you. Thank you all for the wonderful tips.
Recipe: Stone Fruit & Quark Mousse Layered Cake
Summary: A delightful and light special summer cake, this Stone Fruit & Quark Mousse Layered Cake celebrates the bounty of nature. You can make the sponge and fruit filling a day ahead to simplify the process. A delicate dark chocolate lace border adds to the appeal and contrasts well with the quark mousse and stone fruit.
Prep Time: 45 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours plus cooling/chilling
Ingredients:
- Sponge Cake {Make 2 sponges. Recipe is for 1 7.5″ cake}
- 3 eggs
- 100g sugar
- 1/2 a vanilla bean scraped {or 1 tsp vanilla extract}
- 1/2 tsp Camisoni lemon extract
- 75g plain flour
- Quark Mousse
- 400gms quark cheese {homemade recipe here}, chilled
- 200ml low fat cream, chilled
- 100g icing sugar
- 1/2 vanilla bean, scraped
- Stone fruit pie filling {adapted from here}
- 300g Sweet Cherries, pitted
- 5 plums, pitted, chopped
- 50g brown sugar
- 20g butter
- Juice of 1/2 a lime
- 1 tsp cornstarch
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Method:
Sponge Cake
Preheat the oven to 180C. Line 2 X 7.5″ round tins with baking parchment.
Beat the eggs with the sugar and vanilla bean until thick and mousse like {about 7-10 minutes}. Add lemon extract and beat again.
Gently fold the flour in, making sure you don’t lose volume. Add the flour gradually, 2 tbsp at a time, to make sure it mixes through.
Turn the batter gently into the prepared tins, and bake until done for about 30-35 minutes, or till the tester comes out clean.
Cool on racks for 5 minutes, turn out from tins gently, and allow to cool completely.
Stone fruit pie filling
Place the fruit with brown sugar in a non reactive sauce pan and simmer for a couple of minutes until bubbly and gooey. {I added the scraped shells of the vanilla beans too}.
Stir in the butter.
Stir the cornstarch into the lime juice and pour into pan, stirring constantly until the filling thickens. {you can add a teeny bit more cornstarch in 1 tbsp of water if it doesn’t thicken to your desired consistency. It will thicken further as it cools}
Add the almond extract. taste and adjust sweetness if required.
Cool to room temperature, then chill for a few hours. It should be nice and thick, jam like.
Quark Mousse
Whip the low fat cream with sugar to medium peaks.
Whip the quark cheese in a large bowl until smooth.Gently fold in the whipped cream.
Reserve about 1 – 1 1/2 cups for frosting the cake.
Add the stone fruit pie filling to the remaining quark mousse filling. make sure you use just enough to keep the consistency firm. You might have some left over. {It’s delicious over ice cream, in layered parfaits etc}
Assemble Cake
Slice the sponges horizontally into two.
Sandwich the layers with the quark mousse and pie filling mix
Frost the sides with some of the reserved quark mousse
Add a lace border if you like and then cover the top the remaining reserved mousse.
Top with the reserved pie filling and some fresh stone fruit if you like.
Finish the top and edges off with chocolate shavings etc.
Chill well before serving so that the flavours mature.
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Also find me on The Rabid Baker, The Times of India