When you read the descriptions of the desserts, a special atmosphere is created: ganache melting in your mouth, bright confit of tropical fruits, berry coulis and delicate cremeux. Images of delicious desserts appear in your imagination, you want to try them, then find a recipe and cook them. And then understand how all these fillings differ and whether they have anything in common. There will be no recipes for fillings in this post, but I will provide links to recipes that use them.
Ganache
Ganache is an emulsion of liquid and chocolate. All products that contain water act as liquids: cream (65% water), milk, coffee, tea, fruit puree, water. Chocolate can be anything: white, milk, dark or bitter. Sometimes cocoa butter is added to the ganache recipe. It is important to know that ganache made with white chocolate, with the same amount of liquid, is less stable than with dark chocolate. The scope of ganache is so wide that it is difficult to find an example where it is not used.
Confectioners use ganache as:
- Base for mousse. You will find the recipe for ganache-based mousse in the Three Chocolates cake recipe.
- Layer cake
- Cream for smoothing and decorating desserts. Heart cake with whipped ganache
- Filling for candies. There are no candy recipes on the blog yet, but I will try to take the time to add a couple. Now there are candies and fillings in the chocolate course.
- Filling for pasta. You will find 2 recipes for macaron ganache here and a macaron course with the theory of fillings here.
Take a free author's course
HONEY CAKE
On the course you will learn:
- prepare honey cakes
- caramelize nuts
- prepare two types of cream
- collect and decorate the cake with berries
Made from chocolate
You can add melted dark chocolate to any custard or butter filling. You won’t surprise anyone with this cream, although it’s certainly delicious. To add intrigue, you can layer the cake with white chocolate fruit ganache.
This cream is prepared in different ways. The proposed option is only suitable for layering cake layers; you need to cover the cake with a thicker composition.
Ingredients:
- 200 g cream;
- 300 g white chocolate;
- 60 g butter;
- 60 g strawberry puree.
The puree must be rubbed through a fine sieve to remove the berry seeds.
- Melt the chocolate in a water bath.
- Bring the cream to a boil.
- Combine the resulting masses in one container.
- Add the softened butter and puree to the slightly cooled ganache.
- Cool under film.
It is important to combine the components at approximately the same temperature so that the ganache does not separate.
Curd and cream
Cremu means creamy in French. And Kurd from English means custard. Cream and curd describe one type of filling. The basis of the cream is crème anglaise, which is prepared from milk/fruit/berry puree, yolk, and sugar. When the cream anglaise is ready, one or more products are added to it: gelatin, butter, chocolate. The blog has a detailed article on how to make citrus curd.
Apple recipe
The author's recipe from culinary blogger Irina Khlebnikova should be adopted by those who prepare dessert for the children's table. You will have to prepare and cool the applesauce in advance or choose a thick, high-quality version in the store.
For 750 g puree:
- 40 g starch;
- 200 g butter;
- sugar to taste.
The filling can be flavored with vanilla or cinnamon.
- Mix applesauce with starch and sugar.
- Boil over low heat until thickened. The mass will darken noticeably.
- Beat softened butter into the cooled dough.
Mousse
The filling is tender and airy in texture. Consists of two parts: base and aeration. The role of the base is to add flavor to the entire dessert. Ganache, crème anglaise, curd/cremu or even fruit puree act as a mousse base. Aeration adds lightness and airiness to the mousse. Most often, cream is used as aeration, less often meringue. To keep the mousse stable, gelatin is always used in recipes. Cakes with layers of mousse instead of cream (for example, cream cheese) can be frozen.
Mousses are used not only in mousse cakes, but also instead of cream in sponge cakes. If cream cheese almost always has the same taste (variations exist, but the taste is always recognizable, the base is the same), then the taste and texture of mousses are limitless. And only with mousses can you create unique, special desserts. At the same time, they are prepared quite simply. Biscuit is more difficult to prepare, honestly. And for example, the blog published several cakes with mousse instead of cream cheese: recipe for Poppy Cake, Frazier Cake and Chocolate Mint Cake.
Criteria for choosing the filling
Taste is the main criterion for evaluating confectionery products. Taste preferences and allergies to ingredients are taken into account along with other factors.
Comprehensive assessment:
- The occasion and theme of the celebration is a birthday, wedding, children's party. For an anniversary with a large number of guests, “universal” fillings are preferred - creamy, yoghurt, with condensed milk, fruit and berries. You can congratulate your friend with her favorite “drunk cherry” flavored cake.
- Appearance is important for “naked” desserts, when clear boundaries between biscuit layers and the integrity of pieces of fruit and berries are preferred.
- Portion size - a piece of juicy carrot cake with a layer of cream cheese will be heavier than a similar-sized piece of yogurt cake.
- Price - you can celebrate a family holiday with loved ones with an inexpensive ready-made cake. The use of non-seasonal, exotic products in the filling and the complexity of the design significantly increases the cost of a sweet gift.
A “light” cake with yoghurt, curd, fruit and berry filling will suit a festive feast with many hearty dishes. For a corporate buffet you can order chocolate, cheese, and cream desserts. Drink options taken into account are tea, coffee, juice, lemonade, warm milk or milkshake.
Namelaka
Namelaka means “extremely creamy” in Japanese. In the last couple of years, namelaka has often been used by confectioners in the description of desserts and cakes. Namelaki composition: milk, white chocolate, cream 33-35% and gelatin. Namelaka is a mysterious filling that is described with spirituality. It seems that this is the most delicious and incredible substance. Thoughts of frailty and uncertainty immediately come to mind, because I still haven’t been able to isolate and find namelaka among the ganaches and mousses that I’ve prepared in dozens of kilograms. My math brain can't digest the surreally divine descriptions of flavor and texture, but it can analyze recipes. And leaving out all the descriptive adjectives, I will tell you: “Namelaka is a white chocolate ganache with cream, stabilized by gelatin, which can be whipped.” Creative people will find it more tender, melting in the mouth. But this description is suitable for all mousses and ganaches. They all melt in your mouth, they are all tender.
Our top 5 cake fillings
Thanks to access to exotic products, the development of food technologies, and the limitless flight of imagination of confectioners, the list of varieties of fillings for holiday cakes is constantly growing.
Based on order statistics, we can identify the 5 most popular fillings:
- Mr. Banana is a combination of classic buttercream with boiled condensed milk, banana pieces and chocolate sponge cake. Taste of childhood. Some pleasant memories for grandparents or a romantic tea party.
- Caramel - light sponge cake soaked in rum syrup, caramel cream with prunes and walnuts. Caramel “on the cheek” is good for youth parties of any size: from a tea party for two girlfriends, to a noisy hen party before the wedding and a bright festival.
- ChocoCherry is a tandem of luxurious taste of chocolate sponge cake soaked in cherry-rum syrup with cherries in sour cream. A wedding, an anniversary in the banquet hall of a restaurant, a gift for a friend’s birthday, when there is autumn slush or cold snowdrifts outside the window.
- Yogurt temptation - the fruity aroma of vanilla sponge cake, the tenderness of the yogurt cream is complemented by the taste of kiwi, pineapple, strawberry, peach, blueberry, raspberry. The customer chooses the composition of the fruit and berry set according to his taste. Corporate party, outdoor celebration - birthday, wedding.
- Berry mix - light sour cream with blackberries, raspberries, cranberries, blueberries, lingonberries - to choose from - between layers of sponge cake soaked in berry syrup. Suitable for children's and adult events of any format, at any time of the day or year.
Praline and gianduja
Praline is a filling made from nuts and sugar. Roasted nuts (usually almonds, hazelnuts) are poured with hot sugar syrup and ground to a paste. Interestingly, in candy fillings, “praline” means a mixture of chocolate and nut butter, but it is more correct to call it gianduja. Gianduja is a mixture of nut butter and chocolate. Probably, Nutella (chocolate-nut spread) in its original form was gianduja :-), but has now turned into a sugar-butter spread with a minimum of nuts and cocoa.
Make your own pralines with this recipe and gianduja with this recipe.
Cooking with bananas
Fruit filling without eggs, milk and butter can be used in a Lenten or vegetarian menu.
Ingredients:
- half a kilogram of bananas;
- 50 g orange juice;
- 100 g sugar;
- 150 g dark chocolate.
Chocolate can be replaced with a couple of spoons of cocoa with vanilla. Coconut oil (30 g per specified volume of products) will give the cream a silky structure.
- Puree the bananas in a blender.
- Add juice and sugar.
- Bring the mixture to a boil and cook for no more than two minutes.
- Add chocolate pieces to hot mixture. Stir them until completely dissolved.
- If cocoa powder is used, then it must be added at the first stage. Coconut oil, on the contrary, is added after leaving the finished mass off the heat.
- Cool the banana filling by covering it with cling film.
Exercise
And now a task to consolidate the material. Look at the cross-sections of the cakes from the Mousse Cakes online course. You need to understand from the photo what type of filling is in each of the 4 cakes. I’ll say right away that some fillings are determined immediately, but somewhere there may be several options. The correct answers can be found on the course page.
Briefly about the main thing
Factors in choosing filling for a custom-made cake: taste and safety. It is important that you like the dessert and do not cause illness. Confectionery products are not planned to be stored in the refrigerator for weeks; they are bought with or without occasion for the holiday table, just for tea. They are eaten immediately.
The remaining details - resistance to transportation, storage conditions, complexity of cutting - are relevant when ordering large-scale confectionery designs, the production and decoration of which can take from several hours to several days. In this case, the choice of filling is agreed upon with the Oasis confectioner in advance, taking into account the design features. A professional will tell you what fillings are combined in a multi-tiered cake.
`In the description of cakes from the sections`
Wedding cakesChildren's cakesHoliday cakes
Biscuit base - a confectionery classic
Light, aromatic, fluffy and delicious. The biscuit is combined with sugary and moderately sweet, light and butter creams, fruit and berry, chocolate, and cheese fillings.
Advantages of sponge cake:
- stability of volume, shape;
- uniform porosity;
- ability to maintain freshness for a long time.
In addition to the classic combination - eggs, flour, sugar - confectioners have developed many biscuit recipes, including milk, chocolate, nuts, honey, grated carrots.
How to make from cottage cheese
Cakes filled with curd mass turn out to be very tasty and tender. This filling has a pleasant creamy taste, so it is unlikely that any of the guests will remain indifferent to the curd dessert.
For manufacturing you will need the following components:
- cottage cheese – 450 g;
- drinking yogurt or low-fat sour cream – 200 ml;
- powdered sugar – 100 g;
- cream – 250 ml;
- vanillin – 1 teaspoon;
- pieces of fruit or berries - optional.
Sequencing:
- Cottage cheese and sour cream are mixed in prepared dishes; it is more convenient to carry out the process with a mixer or whisk.
- Separately, beat slightly chilled cream and powdered sugar.
- Carefully combine both pieces into a common mass.
- Vanillin, fruit elements or fresh berries are added, and the mixture is thoroughly kneaded again.
The curd dressing can be used immediately.
