Neapolitan Cake : Baking Partners Challenge #5

I know I have been late and lazy these days. Posts are ready, I keep on experimenting, but somehow I find myself running late while updating the blog. But don't worry, I am still around and am planning to be there in future as well. Anyways, the cake was supposed to be posted by Saturday, but here I am now with a  simple experimental cake with not so good decoration. 

                                             

For this challenges, we were given 3 recipes and though I had decided to try another one, somehow this neapolitan cake with 3 colourful layers by Susan Ungaro lured me. The problem, 8 egg whites . Now me being me, went with Ener G and Madhuram's advice and little research and the cakes turned out to be okay, but could have been more better if you are a seasoned baker.Also I couldn't find any whipping cream at the nth minute and went for a simple butter cream frosting. Also you might remember I  had talked about how I had whipped up Ener G for the first challenge. Here I added flax seed glue as an additional binder. But I suppose you can go with Ener G alone.

Ingredients: 

Cake Flour: 1 cup 

Baking Powder: 1 tsp

Almonds Powdered: 1/2 cup

Salt: 1/4 tsp

Egg Whites: 8 or 

Ener G Egg whites: 12 tsp powder  + 1 cup of water (1.5 tsp powder +2 tbsp water per egg)

Flax seed glue: 4 tbsp (optional) 

(Boil 1/3 cup of flax in 3 cups of water for 20 minutes. The liquid will turn gluey and thicken. This can be whipped up like a meringue as per one post I saw while googling, but have not tried that.)

Cream of tartar: 1/4 tsp (I added another 1/2 tsp as well)

Sugar: 3/4 cup

Almond Extract: 1/4 tsp

Green & Red food colouring

Strawberry Jam: few tbsp as per taste

Filling:

Butter: 1 stck or 1/2 cup

Confectioners Sugar: 1.5 cups

Milk/cream: 2 tbsp +/-

Vanilla extract:1/2 tsp

Strawberry Jam

Sweetened coconut flakes

Preparation:

Mix the dry items together -flour,baking powder,salt and almond powder. 

In another bowl, whip up the egg whites along with cream of tartar and whip to soft peaks, Sprinkle in the sugar and fold in gently. Sprinkle the dry mix over the egg white and gently fold in.

I had used flax seed glue along with Ener G just to see whether ir 

Divide the batter into 3 containers of the same size and mix red and green food colouring to either bowl. Place the tins onto a baking sheet and bate in a preheated oven at 350F for about 12 mins till the cake is down and the springs back .Let it cool for  few minutes after which each one is ready for frosting.

For the filling, cream together butter for the first 2 minutes, after which add sugar and continue beating on low speed adding milk/cream to adjust the thickness of the liquid.

Take the green cake and place it on aprropriate dish. Spread about 1/3 cup of jam on top and spread another thick layer of cream on top of it. Place the white cake on top of this and repeat the jam and cream process. Finally frost the enitre cake as per your wish.

I am happy with the cake I got, but definitely it can be improved. Good point is I tried frosting. I am very bad at decoratiions and so this one was a success.

Thanks Swathi Iyer for the excellent cake. Looking forward to the next challenge.