You might remember my last participation in the Foodista Challenge and its theme "It's all raw". I felt quite helpless about making a pastry without baking because it's really not my habit (even though I tend to eat raw dough…). I was ultimately moderately satisfied with my strawberry mousse. So when Marabout proposed that I pick a book from their collection to test it, I thought that "Cake without baking" was a good idea to fill my gaps. And among all the nice recipes I chose the After-Eight cake!

So first, what is a cake without baking? Well, it's a cake that doesn't require an oven and that holds together only with whipped cream beaten very firm, possibly enriched with mascarpone (the more fat it is and the better it holds, which is why you should never take cream with less than 30% fat for whipped cream, otherwise it will NEVER rise).

By the way, this is an opportunity to take a little digression on whipped cream. It's a recipe that has a reputation for being difficult and yet, by respecting 3 fundamentals, it's very simple:

• Take cream with at least 30% fat
• Put the bowl, cream and whisk in the fridge for at least 15 minutes so the cream is very cold
• Stop beating before it becomes butter! In general, we always tend to over-whip whipped cream which is never good. Even if it's not butter, cream that's too firm will be difficult to incorporate into chocolate for example and we risk getting unpleasant little bits.

If you follow these 3 rules, the whipped cream should rise on its own!

And so to get back to our book, there are a bunch of nice recipes but I opted for the "After Eight" version (I'm a fan of the mint/chocolate combination).

The other advantage of cakes without baking is that apart from the whipped cream (but we saw that it wasn't super complicated) it's super simple and quick to make. However, you need to plan ahead because the cake needs at least 4 hours in the fridge to hold together properly.

Normally, the recipe uses ready-made chocolate shortbread cookies but I couldn't find any so I followed this recipe and made two shortbread disks slightly smaller than my ring (20 cm). Also, I preferred to do my assembly in a ring to avoid the hassle of unmolding, but the book recommends lining your mold with cling film and doing the assembly upside down so you can flip the cake onto the serving plate. I directly assembled my cake on the serving plate: a layer of cream flavored with mint cream, a shortbread disk, a generous layer of After Eight ganache and repeat again ending with a layer of cream.

After 4 hours in the fridge, we decorate and unmold:

Tadaaaaa! A super After-Eight cake!

Verdict: it's very fresh, nice and it's a change but you have to like whipped cream, it's very very creamy! But it's a very good alternative for people who don't have an oven. Next time I'll add a little more mint cream, I think it lacked a bit of the minty side that makes the charm of the After Eight!

In any case, it's a really good recipe, and so that one of you can make yourself nice cakes without baking, I propose you win a copy of Cake without baking by simply leaving a comment under the article to participate! You have until June 30 to participate, I will draw a winner from among the participants. To your comments!

Cake without baking After Eight

Camille Patisserie