Welcome back, Friends and Fellow Bakers! Here we are again with another technical that I had very little interest in making: Fondant Fancies (recipe here) as featured on Dessert Week of GCBS Season 1.
Fondant fancies are a kind of general term for miniature tea cakes that are cut into uniform cubes and coated with a poured and set glaze. This version is filled with raspberry jam and coated with white pate de glace (or in my case, melted white chocolate, since I could not find white pate to glace anywhere).
Aesthetically, I like the look of fondant fancies because they remind me of the tea cakes from Alice in Wonderland. Gastronomically, these are of very little interest to me. I also had difficulty figuring out how the coating in the CBC recipe stacks up to traditional British preparations. I found Merry Berry’s (original judge and unintentionally (?) hilarious British lady from GBBO) version (recipe here), which uses actual prepared fondant like you would find on a cake. The venerable Merry Berry dissolves the fondant in a bit of water, warms up the sugar sludge and pours that over her fancies. I found this neither more nor less appealing than pouring white chocolate, so I decided to do that to keep mine as close to the CBC recipe as I could.
Pate de glace is not the only difficulty I had sourcing ingredients. The CBC recipe also calls for almond paste, which is not the same as marzipan. Marzipan is a prepared food that includes egg whites and sugar. Almond paste is supposed to be just crushed almonds. I could not find almond paste anywhere, including online, so I decided to try and cobble something together. I used a portion of almond butter and a portion of ground almonds to try and recreate the texture of paste. The result was I didn’t quite have the right texture in my sponge batter base. It was very sticky and difficult to incorporate with the meringue. The final cake did not rise as high as I would have liked, so I didn’t quite get the nice cube shapes I was trying for. T In retrospect, I would have been better off to just sub ground almonds for the almond paste and maybe a teaspoon of vegetable oil. Live and learn.
I also substituted homemade raspberry jam that I whipped up the day of the bake instead of using a jarred jam like they did. I suspect Smucker’s sponsored this episode of GCBS because it was the only time they have called for jarred raspberry jam so far and the label was displayed prominently throughout the episode. I have no beef with using Smucker’s (a delicious jam if ever there was one!) but I already had raspberries in the freezer and I only needed ¼ of jam so I figured it was cheaper and more logical to just make my own. It also seemed like the logical choice. By making my own jam and using it all up in one bake, I didn’t have to store yet another jar in my fridge which is entirely overrun with esoteric condiments because I am an insane person.
I had some trouble with my French Buttercream this time around as well. I have made egg-based buttercream a few times now for this project. I had made it a few times prior to starting this project as well with varying success. I am getting better at this method and generally more confident, but I am still not 100% expert at it. This was the first time I made buttercream after we turned on the furnace for winter and the ambient temperature was much lower than it has been up until now. My butter was just a little too cold even though it had been out for 24h and I had difficulty getting the icing to emulsify. I did a little baker magic (aka cheating) to fix it, but this was not my best buttercream in the end. A recent trend in baking is to use a torch to heat the mixing bowl when needed, and I think I might invest. I will also turn up the thermostat next time I am doing a butter emulsion which should do the trick. The unique challenges of baking in our famous Canadian climate, AMIRITE.
The other issue I had with this bake was a matter of scale. I have had this challenge with a couple of the other bakes for this project. I have the largest home-size stand mixer available, and I tend to bake to that volume. I still have a hand mixer kicking around and I pull it out when I need to, but I only have one beater left for it and it is not exactly running like a dream anymore. So I muddled through this tiny bake with my large mixer and thought about whether I was willing to purchase a new hand mixer when I hardly ever use the one I have. All signs point to maybe. The point is, the small scale just made a very simple bake more challenging than it needed to be. I guess the idea of the challenge is to be very exacting and precise because you only get one shot to make them look the way they are supposed to. Touché, CBC.
All in all, these are a fairly simple and easy bake that present nicely for a group. They also transport well due to the set glaze on all sides. The basic elements of cake and filling can be adjusted to any sort of flavour profile or theme and presented in this manner as a cute little treat. They would be a fun addition to a tea tray or a kid’s party and they will keep for a few days. A well designed snack all around.
Step 1: Sponge
The almond paste (or in my case, almond butter and ground almonds) are mixed with sugar until crumbly. Egg yolks are added and beaten until well combined. Lemon zest, salt, and vanilla are added to the batter base.
French meringue is made by whipping the egg whites and sugar to stiff peaks. The batter base is folded into the meringue. Cake flour is sifted in to finish. The final batter is spread onto a sheet and baked until golden and springs back.
Step 2: French Buttercream
Sugar is heated to 240F. While the sugar is heating, whole eggs and vanilla are beaten until they are fully aerated. French buttercream is slightly easier to execute than Italian due to the use of whole eggs. Italian uses egg white only (aka meringue) so the timing of the sugar heating and the eggs beating needs to be really well coordinated or the egg whites will overwhip and you will be in a world of hurt. Whole eggs don’t really get overwhipped the way whites do, so the pressure of good timing isn’t as critical.
The hot sugar is streamed into the eggs while the mixer is running. The mixer is left running on high until the bowl comes back down to room temp. Butter is slowly added to the beating mixture and then whipped until fully combined.
Step 3: Assembly
I found the assembly instructions for this a little unnecessarily complicated, but I did learn some lessons from glazing my Opera Cake that I put in practice here. The sponge is cut in half and raspberry jam is spread on one half. The other is layered on top. Buttercream is spread on top and then the cake is chilled so the buttercream firms up.
This version of the recipe then called to flip the cake over to cut it. I guess I understand why: if you cut from the top down, you will likely get crumbs in the buttercream and then you won’t get a clean pour with the glaze. This is true, but if you just wipe your knife (or run it under hot water and then wipe it) between cuts, there is no need to do all this flipping business. But I am here to complain about obey the orders of the CBC recipe developers, however unnecessary and un-edited they may be, so flip the cake I did. Before flipping it, I put a sheet of parchment paper over the chilled buttercream and smoothed it with my hands. I wished I had done this with the Opera cake, but didn’t think of it until it was too late. I will not make that mistake again. If poured glaze is involved in assembly, smoothing is a must. Baking axioms all up in here.
Anyway, the flipped cake is to be cut into perfect 1.5 inch cubes. This was not my most uniform cake cutting. I admit I was a little discouraged I didn’t get the rise I was looking for and I think that impacted my attitude while I was finishing these. Part of me was like, well they won’t look perfect anyway, so who cares? Not my finest hour but if you haven’t noticed, I was not super enthused about this bake in the first place. Not every bake can be a gem, I guess.
Step 4: Glaze
As I mentioned, I could not find pate de glace and I wasn’t really interested in melting fondant like a weirdo Mary Berry, so I went with white chocolate. I do not understand white chocolate. It never seems to behave like regular chocolate. I find it so difficult to work with. I have so much trouble getting it to a pouring consistency. I keep trying to study up on white chocolate and the science of it every time I have to work with it, but it really seems to be a weakness of mine as a baker. All I can do is keep reading and working with it until I figure it out, so here we are.
I melted the white chocolate and got it as pour-able as I could. The hot chocolate is poured over the cut cakes, ensuring to get glaze on all of the exposed sides.
On the show, they finished theirs with edible flowers. We were well past the season of available edible flowers when I made this, so I just used some sprinkles I had in the cupboard which I think look pretty cute.
Gallery
So there we have it. Cute little teacakes that tasted great but also aren’t really anything to write home about, which is pretty much exactly what I expected from this bake. Meeting expectations is preferable to disappointment, I guess. Off we go to our next baking adventure! See you next time!
Hey, bakers! Check out my BAKER’S PANTRY index if you want to deep dive on specific ingredients when attempting this bake for yourself
Baking Summit 