Friday, April 9, 2010

Vanilla-berry charlotte

Pretty, right? That's the main shallow reason I decided to make this. I couldn't wrap my head around what purpose the ladyfingers would serve other than to hold the cake together.
I mean, they weren't dipped in liqueur or anything so they were going to stay hard.
But I decided this would be the perfect (and relatively quickest) show-stopping dessert to make for a Good Friday brunch at my aunt's place.
I was confident I could get it to look almost as good as the Kraft Kitchens recipe, but for the chocolate shavings which I have yet to master, but wasn't sure that this would deliver on the taste.

Fortunately, it was delicious. Light and delicious. To save even more time, you can just buy a ready-made angel cake at the store. I made the white cake from a mix. (Look, when you have a kid, even this is a feat).
I'm still not sold on the ladyfingers though. I guess you can save the ladyfingers to dip in your coffee but I don't really like the idea. It's like the school of thought that would never place a mint leaf on a pastry as garnish unless there was some sort of mint flavour. Maybe next time I will lightly dip the side of the ladyfingers touching the cake in some sort of liqueur.

Substitutions:
None, but I did use less of the jam mixture than I was supposed to. Why? Didn't read the recipe carefully enough.

Would I make this again?
Definitely. But it's a spring recipe, in my eyes. Kraft Kitchens published this recipe in their holiday edition and I'm not sure that it is rich enough to serve in the winter.

Grade:
Four stars out of five. One point docked for the useless ladyfingers.

1 comment:

thecoffeesnob said...

This looks so pretty! But I have to agree with you on the ladyfingers. I imagine the cake would have looked just as gorgeous and tasted just as fantastic without them.