Sponge Cake with Crème Anglaise : Biscuit de Savoie, Crème Anglaise : Lesson 5 : Part 3 : LCB at Home

Cake with a vanilla cream sauce; a decorative dusting of icing sugar and, finally, a strawberry for colour [color]. It's a simple enough sponge cake and a vanilla custard (which, unfortunately, did not thicken as much as it ought to have).

The recipe is simple enough but has a couple of difficult bits: mainly, the crème angalise - it might not thicken and they have a tendency to curdle if it's too hot when they go back on the fire to thicken. I was overly cautious in this case.

What I did was the following:

---

Biscuit de Savoie, Crème Anglaise : Sponge Cake, Crème Anglaise

Serves: 8

Ingredients

• Cake
• egg yolks
• sugar
• vanilla extract
  
  
• flour
• egg whites
• Crème Anglaise
• egg yolks
• sugar
  
  
• vanilla extract
• milk

Procedure

1. Cake
1. Mix egg yolks, sugar and vanilla together until creamy
2. Add flour
3. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites
1. Beat egg whites
2. stir 1/3 of the whites into the flour/yolk mixture (called "tempering")
3. fold the rest of the whites in gently
4. Bake at 175C [350F] for 20-25-30 minutes (until done)
2. Vanilla Custard Sauce
1. Whip egg yolks and sugar together until creamy and form a ribbon as they drip/pour off the whisk
2. Heat milk and vanilla 'til just boilin'
3. Temper the egg mix with the milk mix (1/3 of milk, slowly, stirring into eggs - you don't want foam)
4. The rest of the milk into the egg mix
5. Back onto the heat (low) and warm it, never ever let it get to boiling, until thickened - stir, non stop, using a wooden spoon
6. Strain the resulting custard into the serving thing (a gravy boat would work here)

Notes

1. The cake recipe makes 2 (two) 23 cm [9"] cakes - although you only need one
2. Dusted with icing sugar for looks. It will disappear/melt before the next day so you have to do it again.
3. Strawberries happen to be in season at the moment; you could use anything or nothing to decorate the cake
4. I hear that adding a pinch (just a pinch) of flour to the mix when cooking the custard prevents curdling; haven't tried that yet

---

To be fair to the school, and to avoid criminal prosecution for theft of intellectual property, I've left out the quantities for the ingredients; which you'll find in their book Le Cordon Bleu: At Home. Or in a quick search on the web.

del.icio.us Tags: dessert,recipe