I have wanted to make some version of a red, white, and blue coffee cake once summer hit for weeks now. Blueberries for the blue, a red berry for the red. Then I got a great deal on some fresh sweet cherries – the time was now!
I made a sour cream coffee cake base and piped it into my favorite pan that I greased beforehand. I was so excited to make these, that I even took pictures of my pan before I baked to show you! It’s ceramic, it’s green, it is fluted with a little flower pattern on the bottom.
In my mind, this pan is like mini bundts. Individual portions are fun. Almost whimsical.
I put the batter into a piping bag to avoid making a sloppy mess and piped a ring in the bottom, tucked in 3 blueberries and 3 pitted and halved cherries into a ring. Sprinkled chopped walnuts, spinkled with cinnamon sugar, then piped another ring on the top. More berries, more sugar, and into the oven.
Well. I forgot this pan often sticks. This memory is overpowered by how cute I think the pan is.
Muffin tops spilled over, stuck to the top of the pan, and the inside was overly moist with the fruit and the sour cream/butter cake base.
They all came out in 2+ pieces.
Not to be deterred, I asked myself the perennial question. What would I do if I were on, er, Summer Baking Championship? Was that a one season wonder? Anyway.
Trifle. Broken cake means trifle.
A quick search showed that a trifle is typically made with pastry cream between the layers. I could do that.
I made a small batch of pastry cream almost as soon as I knew my mini cakes were a mega disaster. Into the container, plastic film on top. I scraped the pot and mesh strainer leftovers into a juice glass to have as a treat later.
Was it good? Of course. Eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla bean paste. How can you go wrong? But it was a little, um, stiff. Gelatinous.
I went to bed that night thinking that I did not want to eat broken up coffee cake with a rubbery vanilla pudding. I drifted off thinking about what else uses pastry cream.
Eclairs!
I had made choux pastry only once before, and it was a solid fifteen years ago on a whim. I’d seen someone make it on TV and thought it looked so easy that, of course, I could do that! (Surprisingly I did and made some profiteroles.)
The choux was a success.
But that pastry cream was still bothering me. I had a little leftover heavy cream, so I was able to lighten it up and thin it out with some whipped cream into a diplomat cream-esque filling. The heavy cream container did double duty to make a ganache for the traditional topping.
And voila! From failure comes success.
I was told, and I quote, “best thing you’ve ever made.”
Lesson #1: Never give up.
Lession #2: Just buy a silicone mini bundt pan already.
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