The transition from August to September is difficult for me. We have, in my family, three birthdays in four days. My mother kicks it off on the 29th, then we have a day off, then me, then my little brother. It’s a lot of birthday and a lot of cake and I generally wind up exhausted by the time it’s over.
This year I asked my mother what kind of cake she wanted. She replied that she wanted "something fruity". This is pretty vague and I had to think for a while, but I remembered a "cake" that I had made some years back and decided to revisit it. It’s based on my regular cream puff recipe, but adds fruit to it. It tastes wonderful and is exceptionally easy to make, so I decided to share it.
Summer’s Last Hurrah, a recipe by FyreGoddess
You start by taking 3/4 cup of water and 1/3 cup of butter and bring them to a boil. Once they have boiled, remove them from heat and add 3/4 cup of flour. Add 3 eggs, one at a time. For cream puffs, you would drop the puffs onto an ungreased cookie sheet, but since this is a single cake, you instead pour all the batter into the center of an ungreased cookie sheet and cook at 400 for 15-25 minutes, or until it’s golden on top.
For the cream, you simply fold together 1 cup of vanilla pudding and 1/4 cup whipped heavy cream.
When it has cooled, cut the puff in half. Warning: It will fall after it comes out of the oven, but because we’re stuffing it with goodness, that’s nothing to worry about.
Layer summer fruits with the cream inside the puff shell. For mom’s birthday I started with thinly sliced peaches and plums, a layer of cream, then a mix of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, then another layer of cream and the lid. The reason for the name is that August/September is the last of the summer fruit season, so I take summer fruits to use in the layers. Were you to use a different season’s fruits, you might call it "Autumn’s Last Hurrah" or something, but I think that summer fruits work best.
Once the cake is assembled, take 4oz of dark chocolate and 1T of butter. Melt in a double boiler and drizzle over the top of the cake.
Mmmmm. So delicious.
Mom says she wants this cake every year. RC2 says he also wants this cake on *his* birthday. Chaos says I should make more cream puffs.
Heh.