Tuesday 15 September 2009

Softminty adventures in yogurt cake land

I have been of the opinion of late that the ringbearer has been getting one too many cakes his way. Therefore I decided to concoct one of my favourite cakes, which includes yoghurt and strawberries. Somehow the ringbearer's puppy dog eyes did manage to persuade me to add malteasers instead of strawberries. But I was not completely manipulated! I have long pondered how to include mints into cakes. After all mints take up a large section of the sweetie shelves, shouldn't they be included in my experiments? Here was the ideal opportunity.Stage 1. Baking the chocolate cake base
Pretty boring really, except I added some malteasers just for fun
Stage 2. Playing with gelatine.
I love playing with gelatine (not much for vegetarian baking I'm afraid). Covering the sheets in water makes for a nice mystery when it comes to fishing around for the squishy gelatine. Subsequently squeazing the gunk before heating it in a pan is also very pleasant sensation. Nice and oozy.Stage 3. Making the yoghurty mix
Yoghurt, lime juice, whipped cream, sugar and gelatine. Yummy! This was then slopped onto the cake baseStage 4. Addition of the sweeties
I refused to go all malteasers, so most of the cake was still strawberry filled. A section was mixed with malteaser, a section was homogeneously malteaser and another section included lovely softmints.
Stage 5. Refrigeration and a discovery!
The yoghurt mix set quite nicely around the strawberries and malteasers. But fascinatingly the softmints melted (liquified)! My chemistry senses were twitching! Softmints become quickly chewy in the mouth and dissolve. Which might happen due to a change in pH rather than (as I thought) heat and agitation. Had my yoghurty mix been acidic enough to liquefy the softmints? Or had the presence of gelatine caused some sort of diffusion? Or had the softmints just givenup any semblance of solidity the moment they were exposed to the cold. Cowards!

The liquid softmints meant that the minty flavour had travelled further than expected within the cake and was not limited to pockets of mintyness. This was odd but not unpleasant and went quite well with strawberries. The malteasers also worked really very well. The ringbearer noted that the cake was the only one he had eaten that left a minty fresh aftertaste. Although he refused further comment as he was clearly bitter about the 'healthiness' of the strawberries. I therefore think that it would be easier to add mint cordial to the yoghurty mix rather than softmints to achieve the same taste sensation. The malteasers might be a permanent addition to the normal fruity goodness.

Any suggestions about the magic melting effect of cold yoghurt and gelatine on softmints are welcome.

3 comments:

  1. You think a litre of yoghurt and cream is healthy?

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  2. I consider Yoghurt healthy certainly. Plus strawberries are clearly fruit and therefore healthy. Overall far too much health in a desert product. Plus I'm fairly anti-fruit in cakes anyway.

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