Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A
although I love baking and decorating cakes, I love the simple pound cake or it’s equivalent with fruit for myself. About a year or so ago, a friend gave me a link for a castella cake after she had it at a brunch and said she knew that I would want the recipe. This link also includes a video and the recipe is easy to follow and I have made it several times since. I must say if I am pressed for time, I just settle for my usual pound cake, but when I have guests and want to impress, I will go the extra …..
http://www.justonecookbook.com/recipes/castella/
that I couldn’t tell you. At the time, I could find pictures of the long loaf box but no sellers. There was a woodenboxco. that sold fruit cakes in wooden boxes that looked delicious but not the boxes and they were square(all over the world) There was a place called http://lucindaswoodcakeboxes.com that sells boxes to bake cakes and gives instructions on how to bake with the boxes, prepare the boxes, etc. but they too looked square and not in a loaf shape- so I just went with my long Wilton loaf pan and parchment paper, sprayed with PAM.
Hello Kath
Castella cake or bread as I call it is very similar to our maderia cake but without the butter. It is a fatless sponge but uses bread flour instead of plain. There are lots of similar recipes throughout Europe. If you don’t have a wooden box, use a loaf pan instead. In one of the videos in youtube the demonstrator has made an improvised ‘box’ by placing a smaller ready prepared cake pan inside a larger one The gap left at the sides is filled in with corrugated card boardbox panels wrapped in foil. This allowes the smaller pan to fit in snuggly and the wrapped panels also act as insulation. I’ve not made castella but I regularly make fatless sponge or fatless genoise for my fresh fruit and cream desserts. Baking in a dark cake pan rather than a light one will achieve a darker outter crust as shown in pictures of castella. The colour in castella is probably due to the caramelization of the starch syrup and high quantity of sugar which is used in the recipe. The high amount of sugar, plus the number of eggs gives the crumb it’s moist texture. Since the recipe uses bread flour and no leavening, the rise is obtained through the whisking method. As with regular fatless sponge making, it is better to beat the egg mixture on a low speed for longer rather than beat vigorously which causes the texture to be full of large holes.
Thats all I can tell you about this cake or those similar to it. If you really want to try baking it in a wooden box why not email the NZ company which produces them and ask whether they have world wide outlets. I’ve seen something similar occasionally advertised on Amazon and ebay. Not every one can bake successfully in them as you can read from these reviews:
http://www.foodlovers.co.nz/forum/read.php?3,66970
However that may be more due to preparation of the box rather than the quality.
To see variations of kasutera take a peek here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castella
