Ladies whim cake | Damen kapric torta

Damen Kapric is a olde world cake that made its way to Croatia when the country was under Austro-Hungarian rule. This was my first time making it and while it’s too sweet for me I feel like it’s almost a magical cake. The layer of thick batter that turns into a dense sponge, then a layer of baked berry jam and finally a layer of meringue with pink food colouring through it. It’s just wonderful to look at and a total show-stopper.

I used the recipe from He Needs Food. Where traditional recipes just kind of slap the meringue on top and bake it in, the He Needs Food version has you piping the meringue on top. Yes it’s more work (and more washing up) but the piping really makes it special and hence, I tried this recipe.

It is sweet! There is sugar in the sponge layer, sugar in the jam and sugar in the meringue. But within half a day the whole thing was pretty much eaten up by the household so hey, nothing wrong with a bit of bouncing off the walls.

I did add some rose petals (just because I have loads after I made the Rozata) so I added these for the photography and yes, they were eaten as well. My word of advise is to use a springform tin. Once the berry jam bakes into the sponge and then with the meringue on top, there is no way you could get this cake out of a normal cake tin. So you must have a springform tin.

Ingredients:

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Grease and line a 20-25cm springform tin. Mine (actually my sister’s) was 20cm and I had meringue left over that I made meringue kisses out of…just a serving suggestion 🙂
2. Beat the butter and sugar until creamy and add the yolks, vanilla and zest, beating until combined.
3. Add the milk gradually and beat until it forms a batter.
4. Stir in the flour until a thick batter forms. The batter is meant to be really thick, don’t add more milk to thin it out! Scrape into the tin and bake for 25 minutes.
5. Remove the cake from the oven and spread with an even layer of jam and pop it back in the oven for 10 minutes.
6. For the meringue, whisk the egg whites and lemon juice until peaks form. Add the caster sugar one tablespoon at a time (yes, really) and keep whisking. Whisk for another five minutes after all the sugar is in.
7. Take out half a cup of meringue and add the smooth jam and food colouring. Mix well. Add the pink meringue mix to the white meringue and gently fold it in a couple of times so that you get pink streaks through the white.
8. Take the cake out of the oven and turn it down to 150 degrees C.
9. Pipe the meringue mixture onto the hot cake (I thought this would melt the meringue but it didn’t) and put it back in the oven for 10 minutes. Then turn off the oven and leave the cake in there to completely cool until the meringue is dry and set.
10. Dust it with icing sugar and serve. (He Needs Food recommends serving with double cream).

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