Sweetly in haste, desserts you don’t cook

I am not a pastry chef. I like savory foods better and I dedicate my time to working on them, rather than dessert. There comes a time for all of us when we want to make a great dessert without using kitchen resources or a lot of time.

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I’ve been working on exactly that: desserts that look and taste great, but are no trouble at all. This is the first that’s ready to show you. I don’t even have a name for it and I am open to suggestions from you, because that certainly worked with the “Phone Home” expat cookies.

This cake is made out of things you can buy and keep around the house, if you have to. If not, you can probably get them together with little effort. You don’t have to buy my version of the ingredients, but I’m sure you can get a suitable alternative near you. It’s not really cooking, but more assembly.

The finished cake you see today is not as pretty as the one I started with last summer for two reasons. I’d had the whipping cream stored in the freezer for months and for some reason it just wouldn’t whip stiffly. In the summer I used two packages of fresh raspberries and covered the top completely with them in concentric circles. For the winter version, I bought late summer raspberries, froze them separately and then bagged them. They wept as they thawed. One person really liked that effect, but I liked the original non-weepy cake better.

You need:

Sponge cake layers. The original cake was made of packaged layers that come in threes and are wider than this cake. If I were somewhere else, I could have ordered them from a grocery store with a bakery, from a bakery or made them myself, and any of them could be kept wrapped in the freezer. With these normal 9″ layers, I used a bread knife to split them into four thinner layers. They were a little too fresh, really. They cut poorly and I was able to use less liqueur, because they would have shattered and slid apart if I’d generously dampened them.

Raspberry liquor of some kind. I looked for a French white raspberry eau de vie, and there was none, so the vintner convinced me to try raspberry grappa and it was fabulous. It was just grappa poured over raspberries in a bottle, and the berries gave up their perfume and a slight pinkish tinge.

Raspberry jam. There was only one brand in my shop and fortunately it was good.

Chocolate mousse mix. You can see what I used. That’s it here. As instant things go, it’s pretty good.

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A pint of whipping cream and a little sugar.

Raspberries.

Make the mousse according to directions. You don’t cook it, you just whip it. Stick it in the fridge to firm up. You could get this far a day ahead.

Put the first layer on a large plate that will hold it. Sprinkle it with raspberry liquor, generously if you have the drier layers. Spread the jam sparingly over the cake, covering it, but not thickly at all. This is important.

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Spread a light covering of mousse over the jam. Keep doing this in series until the top layer goes on and that one you just sprinkle with liquor. Spear the cake with three long skewers to stabilize it and put it in the fridge. This is when you’ll be happy you weren’t excessive with the jam and mousse, because if you had been, the layers would be so unstable that you’d never get it to stand on it’s own.

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Just before serving time, whip the cream, being stingy with the sugar so the pronounced flavor will be cream and not sweet. There’s enough sweet in there already. Arrange the raspberries on top, and serve.

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Look! Matching hostess.
If I use the drier bought layers, it serves 12 to 16 people, easily. With four smaller layers, it serves 10 to 12 people. Although there’s just as much cake each way, the very tall one just can’t be cut into narrow slices.

My favorite dog likes this too, in a virtual way, because although I sent him a generous piece, he never got it.

The two pictures of the finished cake were shot by Barb of Barb and Art Live in Italy.