Prinsesstårta (Princess Cake)

Yay! My amazing employer, the German Aerospace Center, is sending me on a business trip to Kiruna in northern Sweden, where, among other things, I get to see a rocket launch from TEXUS  :-) At the European Rocket Range, most of the residents cook for themselves, i.e., there are common kitchens -  and naturally I thought of taking a couple of baking utensils - only the bare necessities, of course ;-) 
Regarding Sweden, two cakes come to my mind: the Prinsesstårta is a very famous Swedish cake that I've wanted to bake for a while now. The Kronenkrakker is very unknown, however, because it was invented by me and baked only once - for details see here in this blog...


Ingredients for 16 servings:
4 eggs 
1 cup (225 g) sugar 
1/2 cup (62 g) flour 
1/2 cup (80 g) cornstarch 
1 tsp baking powder 

1 cup (240 mL) whipping cream 38% fat
4 egg yolks 
3 tsp cornflour 
2 tablespoons sugar 
1 vanilla sugar 

2 cups (480 mL) whipping cream 38% fat
100 g raspberry jam 
200 g marzipan + green food coloring or a readymade marzipan sheet
50 g marzipan and red food coloring 

Energy:  390 kcal per serving 

Preparation:
Line the foor of a cake mold with baking paper (I only had a 26cm form, a 24cm would have been better for the readymade marzipan sheet).
Beat the eggs with the sugar until fluffy, add flour, cornflour and baking powder and fold together.

Pour the sponge mixture into the mold (thanks to my colleague Ingrid, there are even action shots of that ;-)) and bake the sponge cake for about 30 minutes at 175°C. 

In the meantime, prepare the vanilla cream: mix cream, egg yolks, starch and sugar in a small saucepan and heat very slowly, stirring constantly, until the cream thickens. Don't let it get too hot because the yolks will curdle!

Stir the vanilla sugar into the cream and allow to cool. 

Take the sponge base out of the mold and let it cool on a wire rack.

Knead the food coloring into the marzipan - thanks to the readymade marzipan sheet, I only had to do that for the pink rose or rocket decorations. 

Roll out the marzipan, I used a clean wine bottle with the label removed, and cut out the shape or decoration.

Cut the fully cooled sponge twice, such that one portion is thinner than the other two. 

Whip the cream until stiff and assemble the cake:

Put one of the thicker bases on a cake plate. Our impromptu cake plate here consists of a large trivet wrapped in aluminum foil, which Ingrid has designed and implemented. ;-) Spread a thin layer of raspberry jam on the first base and add a thick layer of vanilla cream on that, about half of the cream. 

Distribute a good third of the cream on the vanilla cream.

Add the second base and spread the rest of the vanilla cream and another third of the cream on it. I built a small dam of cream on the edge, such that the vanilla cream stays nicely in the middle, and then piled the cream into the middle, to achieve the classic dome shape.

Add the third cake base and slightly press to get it into dome shape.

Thinly coat the cake with the remaining cream. 

Add the marzipan sheet. I had to cheat a little, because the purchased readymade sheet was  31 cm in diameter, and as expected, it was too small for the 26cm cake and I didn't have another baking tin there. 

Actually, you would now top the cake with a pink marzipan rose, but because we are on a TEXUS campaign, there were small TEXUS rockets instead :-)

In the absence of my cookie stamps, I used the handle of a teaspoon for the letters, which also worked quite well! 
 Cool for a while or enjoy it right away ;-)