Prague cake or Prague cake is nostalgia.Nostalgia for childhood and youth. Unfortunately, modern confectioners do not like this recipe, and you will rarely find Prague cake in stores. Therefore, many people make the amazingly delicious Prague chocolate cake at home. And if no one has any problems with baking the cakes, then making the cream raises a lot of questions: what kind of cream, from what and how exactly. And home confectioners are also interested in the question of icing for Prague cake and how to decorate it. We offer you answers to all these questions. Let's start with the fact that Prague cake is made with chocolate cream. Butter chocolate cream, which is spread on chocolate cakes, is an integral part of any version of Prague cake. And this cream can be made in different ways.
Cream with condensed milk
Ingredients:
- Condensed milk - 1 pot;
- Butter - 250 g;
- Cocoa powder - 3 tablespoons.
Preparation:This cream is made from softened butter. So take it out of the refrigerator in advance and let it melt. The butter should become soft (easy to spread on bread), but should not "float" at all. Cut the butter into pieces and put them in a saucepan. Then, using a mixer, beat the butter (literally one minute and at low speed) into a fluffy, homogeneous mass. And then continue to beat the cream, adding condensed milk to it. Add milk little by little: pour in a tablespoon of condensed milk - beat, another spoon - beat again. And so on - until you beat all the condensed milk into the cream. Then add cocoa powder and beat the cream again. The finished cream should easily slide along the walls of the pan, leaving no marks on it.
Custard oil
This cream is also known as "Charlotte". For it, a custard base is first prepared, which is then added to the butter. Ingredients:
- Milk - 1 glass;
- Flour - 1 tablespoon;
- Sugar - 1 glass;
- Butter - 250 g;
- Egg - 1 pc.
Preparation:Heat fresh unleavened milk almost to boiling. Pour sugar into a separate saucepan and add a raw egg to it. Mix sugar with egg, pour flour there and mix again. Then pour in (constantly stirring) hot milk and put the saucepan on the fire. Cook the custard, also constantly stirring it. Cook over low heat, waiting for the cream to thicken. As soon as the custard base boils, immediately remove the saucepan from the heat and cool the cream. Next, beat the cream in the same way as in the first case (with condensed milk). That is, add the custard base in small portions to the softened and lightly whipped butter. At the very end of whipping, put cocoa powder into the cream. Note: Do not use enamelware for the custard base. You can quickly cool the custard by placing the saucepan with the cream in a bowl of cold water. Use only cocoa powder as a chocolate additive and never ready-made mixtures for making a cocoa drink. The butter and custard base for whipping the cream should be the same temperature. And most importantly, do not forget to add vanilla and some alcoholic drink to the cream: rum, cognac, liqueur or even vodka (1 teaspoon or tablespoon).
Sour cream
Some Prague cake recipes suggest adding sour cream to the cake. Well, if you want to make exactly this Prague cake, then make sour cream too. Ingredients:
- Sour cream - 500 g;
- Sugar - 1 glass.
Preparation:To make the cream thick and fluffy, you need to use only natural fat sour cream. Therefore, do not take various "sour cream products" and sour cream with less than 20% fat content. Sour cream must be freed from excess moisture. To do this, put it in a sieve covered with gauze and put it in the refrigerator overnight. Pour sugar into the "dehydrated" sour cream and beat with a mixer at maximum speed. The ideal state of the cream is a thick fluffy "cap".
Glaze for Prague cake
The classic Prague cake is covered with chocolate glaze. It can be prepared using different recipes. The simplest is to pour melted chocolate over the cake. Ingredients:
- Tile of dark chocolate;
- Milk or cream.
Preparation:Break the chocolate bar into pieces and place it in a saucepan. Then add one or two tablespoons of milk to the chocolate and melt the chocolate in a water bath. You will get a liquid glaze that becomes solid as it cools. But in addition to this method of preparation, you can cook the glaze from milk and sugar. If you want to make sugar chocolate glaze, take the following ingredients:
- Cocoa powder - 2 tablespoons;
- Milk - 4 tablespoons;
- Sugar - 4 tablespoons;
- Butter - 50 g.
Preparation:Mix sugar with cocoa powder and pour in milk. Then heat until sugar dissolves (the mixture should thicken in the process). Cool the glaze and beat it a little with butter.
Decoration of Prague cake
There can't be any strict rules here.restrictions. If you remember the Prague cake of the Soviet era, it was usually decorated with chocolate cream on top: a relief border and a few flowers. Therefore, continuing the culinary traditions of those times, decorate the cake exactly the same way. However, you can make both the cream border and the flowers-petals whatever you like. If you use icing for decoration, then first coat the cake with thick confiture, for example, apricot. If you are making the Prague cake with sour cream, then use it for decoration, making individual elements from white sour cream. You can also decorate the Prague cake with icing, which is fashionable today, by adding cocoa to it, or making decorations from melted and again hardened chocolate. And the easiest way is to grate chocolate shavings and sprinkle the cake on top of the cream or icing. Go for it! And you will succeed. We recommend reading:
