Sunset Hush Cooking

Karpatka Cake With Fruit Filling

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Sunset Hush Homemaking

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Ingredients

For a 9’’ (22.5 cm) round baking pan

Dough (pâte à choux):

  • 70 g water
  • 70 g full-fat milk
  • 60 g butter (82% fat)
  • 100 g cake flour
  • a pinch of salt
  • 1/4 tsp sugar
  • 3 eggs, room temperature

Custard buttercream (crème mousseline):

  • 330 g full-fat milk
  • 67 g egg
  • 90 g sugar
  • 25 g corn starch
  • 100 g butter, room temperature
  • Vanilla

Fruit / berry filling:

  • 300 g fruit or berries (peach, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry)
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1 tbsp cornstarch
  • powdered sugar for dusting the cake

Directions

To make the crusts:

  1. Prepare two 9’’ (22.5 cm) round baking pans if you want to bake both crusts simultaneously. Or if you have only one, you will bake one crust after another. Line the bottom with parchment paper.
  2. In a pot, mix water (70 g), full-fat milk (70 g), 60 g butter, a pinch of salt, and 1/4 tsp sugar.
  3. Heat up the mixture on medium heat until the butter melts and the liquid starts simmering. Make sure it doesn’t boil over. Stir to mix everything together (it won’t be smooth / emulsified, you will see butter separated). Remove the pot off the heat.
  4. Sift 100 g of all-purpose flour with 1/4 tsp baking powder into the mixture. Mix with the liquid ingredients until there is no more dry flour left.
  5. Set the pot back to medium low heat and stir the dough ball continously to cook the flour. You will see steam. In a couple of minutes there will be a thin velvety layer of flour on the bottom of the pot, and the dough will form a single ball. As soon as you see this change, remove the pot off the heat.
  6. Take a big bowl you will be finishing the dough in and measure its weight on a scale. Record the weight.
  7. Transfer the dough into the bowl and let it cool until it is warm to touch. You can spread it around in the bowl so that it cools faster.
  8. When the dough is warm to touch, start mixing the dough with an electric mixer and add 2 eggs one by one. Thoroughly mix the dough after each egg, until smooth.
  9. Whisk the remaining egg with a little pinch of salt until smooth. Start adding it to the dough in little portions while mixing. As soon as the dough reaches the target consistency, stop adding the egg. The dough should be rather thick but drop and leave a distinctive V shape when lifted with a spatula.
  10. Measure the weight of the bowl with the dough on a scale. Subtract the weight of the bowl and divide the result by 2. This is the amount of dough that will go into each of the baking pans. E.g. if the bowl weight recorded in step 6 is 100 g, the weight with the dough is 500 g. Then (500-100) / 2 = 200 g of dough will go into each baking pan.
  11. Transfer equal amounts of dough into each of the baking pans. Spread it out thin but without gaps. Bake at 190 C / 375 F until the crust puffs up and gets golden. This should take around 25 minutes, but the exact time depends on the oven. Transfer the crusts onto a rack to cool.

To make the cream:

  1. In a pot, add milk (330 g), whisked egg (67 g), sugar (90 g), corn starch (25 g), and vanilla.
  2. Heat up the mixture on medium-low heat, constantly whisking, until it thickens. This might take around 10-15 min.
  3. Pass the curd through a mesh strainer to remove any egg bits, so that the curd is silky smooth.
  4. Cover the curd with plastic wrap or parchment paper, fully touching the curd. Let the curd completely cool down to room temperature, while being fully covered. You can spread it on a tray to help it cool faster.
  5. Take room temperature butter (100 g) and whip it with an electric mixer until it is fluffy and very pale.
  6. The curd might thicken when it sits on the counter and cools. Whisk the curd until it is smooth.
  7. Continuosly whisking the butter, start adding the curd in small portions (about 1 tbsp). When a portion of curd has fully incorporated, add the next portion. When all the curd has been added, the cream is done.

To make the fruit filling:

  1. Cut your fruit into small cubes, about the size of a blueberry. If you are using small berries, no cutting will be needed.
  2. Put the fruit into a pot and mix it with sugar (1 tbsp) and cornstarch (1 tbsp).
  3. Heat it up on medium-low heat until it releases juice.
  4. Let the fruit simmer for 3-5 minutes until it is slightly cooked and forms a thickened sauce.
  5. Let the fruit cool down before assembling the cake.

To assemble the cake:

  1. Use a cake ring or a springform pan. Line the edges with acetate film or parchment paper.
  2. Place one of the crusts on the bottom, the “hilly” part looking upwards.
  3. Spread out the fruit filling evenly.
  4. The bottom of the second crust will likely have “hollows”. Fill them with cream.
  5. Transfer the remaining cream onto the cake.
  6. Cover the cake with the second crust.
  7. Set the cake into the fridge for 3-4 hours for the cream to stabilise.
  8. Dust the cake with powdered sugar before serving.

Notes

  • The crust comes out of the baking pan very easily, so there is no need to grease the baking pan.
  • For the cream to come together without separation, butter and curd must be the same room temperature. If not, the cream will not emulsify and there will be bits of butter remaining – it won’t be smooth.
  • Do not overcook the flour as it might result in a cracked crust when baked.
  • The cake is best enjoyed right away as the dough might become kind of stale when it sits in the fridge for over 12 hours.
  • Once a crust is in the oven, do not open the oven until it’s fully baked. Otherwise it might collapse.

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