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Tips for making Reform Cakes and Others


Reform cake - Recipe Step by step

  • Cakes are the ultimate work of confectionery, and we rarely see them on the table, usually only in the event of an important event or celebration. There are reasons why this is so, but one of the most common is that cooks have a hard time embarking on the adventure of making cakes, this fear is not unreasonable.

reform-cake-slice-on-dessert-plate
Tips for making Reform Cakes and Others

Reform cakes and other complicated cakes are not easy to prepare without being what they really are.

  • Reform cake can be made in 2 ways. With hot or cold filling. The difference between hot and cold filling is that in the first case, margarine/butter is added to hot, cooked yolks, while cold fillings mean that the yolks are first cooled and then whipped into a foam with margarine or butter.

- I believe you all know the basic recipe for Reform cake. The crusts are made from egg whites, sugar and walnuts. Beat egg whites and sugar, add walnuts and bake for 20–30 minutes at 200 °C. For the filling, egg yolks and sugar are steamed until they thicken, margarine/butter is added, and when the mixture is combined, chocolate is added. The most common filling is 10 egg yolks and 250 g of sugar. There is also one with 12 egg yolks and 300 grams of sugar. They are all very similar, but the same rule applies to all those recipes, the filling with so much sugar is too sweet. There is one simple principle for reforming a cake. The more egg yolks you put, the more sugar goes. If there are 200 grams of egg yolks, they have to be beaten with 200 grams of sugar.

  • The recipe and method of preparation seem simple, but it is not.

  • How to explain the fact that out of 10 Reform cakes, one succeeds and 9 fail? The answer is very simple, in making the cream and the thickness.

reform-cake-recipe
Tips for making Reform Cakes and Others

Reform cake is made in 9 steps. Each step will be explained in detail:

1. Separate the whites from the yolks

2. Beat egg whites and sugar, then add ground walnuts

3. Bake the skins

4. Melt the margarine and discard the water

5. Beat egg yolks with sugar

6. Steam the egg yolk

7. Add margarine, combine, then add chocolate

8. Fill the skins

9. Make the glaze


1. Breaking eggs

- Chicken eggs are divided into classes according to weight, and in order to avoid any confusion, when I say 10 eggs in the following text, I mean S class eggs. These are eggs weighing 65–70 grams. It doesn't hurt to know other types of eggs:

  • SU - 70 g and over

  • S - 65-70 gr

  • A - 60-65 gr

  • B - 55-60 gr

  • C - 50-55 gr

  • D - 45-50 gr

  • E - 45 g and less

In percentages, the egg is composed of:

  • husks - 14%

  • egg yolk - 28%

  • egg white - 58%

These percentages are difficult to remember, but it is good to know at least some approximate relations. That's why I made a rough calculation. One 70 gram egg contains:

  • 10 g of husk

  • 20 g of egg yolks

  • 40 g of egg whites

Separating the egg whites from the yolks can sometimes be a very thankless job, so a few tips in this regard will certainly be useful.

- To make it easier to separate the yolk from the white, the eggs should be - fresh. How to recognize a fresh egg? Dissolve 70 grams of table salt in a liter of water, boil and cool the solution. When you immerse an egg in this solution, if it lies at the bottom of the container, it means that it is fresh, if it rises from the bottom but does not float, then it is 5–6 days old, if it floats to the surface, then it is stale, and it is better not to use it.


- Why hit an egg when you want to break it? Do not use sharp edges. Beating one egg against another is ideal. The disadvantage of this method is that you always hold two eggs in your hands, which is not very convenient when separating the yolks from the whites. But once you get used to it, it's very convenient. The rounded edge of the stove is a good place. Better still, beat the egg against the rounded edge of a thick white coffee mug. Do not use the edge of the cup that is closer to you, but the one that is further away. In this way, the egg and the hand will be above the opening of the cup, so if the shell is soft and crumbles after a very light blow, and the egg wants to fall out of the shell, it will do so in the cup, so you will easily be able to transfer it to the bowl with the egg whites, and from there it will be quite easy to remove the yolks with a spoon or half of the shell.


- It is convenient to know when you hit the egg in the middle, and start to separate the shell, whether the yolk is in the left or right half of the egg. It sounds strange, but this can be known. Namely, the yolk is lighter than the white, and it always tends to rise. If you take the egg out of the cardboard tray, know that at that moment the yolk is in the upper half of the egg, and now you just need to take care of it, and break them much more comfortably.


- Since there are rare eggs that have the same hardness of the shell, it often happens that the egg literally falls apart, and the blow was not too strong. The best way is to always use two shots. One quite light, because the soft shell will also break from it, and the other, somewhat stronger, which should also break those eggs whose shell is not so thin. Once you get used to cracking eggs only this way, you will have less trouble.


- If it happens that the shell is so broken that it is almost unusable in terms of transferring the egg from one half to the other, it is better to shake the entire contents of the egg into a container with egg whites, and when you come across the first "normal" egg, you will also take out the yolks that they temporarily reside in the wrong container.

2. Whipping cream from egg whites and sugar

Crust Ingredients:

  • 10 egg whites/ 370 g

  • 250 g of sugar

  • 250 g of ground walnuts

-Turn on the oven at 200 °C and let it heat up. Wet the oven tray with a sponge, and put baking paper on the wet tray. Pour the egg white into a suitable container and beat with a mixer. Whites of 10 eggs are beaten for only 2 minutes, sugar is added and beaten for another 1.5 minutes. Add walnuts to the beaten egg white mixture and mix with a whisk to distribute the nuts evenly. Pour into a tray and flatten. Do not start whisking until the oven is almost fully heated. When the walnuts are added to the beaten egg whites, there is no waiting - the crust must be baked immediately.

3. Baking the crust

  • The skins are baked at 200 °C on the middle height of the stove for about 20–25 minutes. Really nice, because it takes me 20 minutes to explain to you why there is so much insistence on whipping the egg whites for such a short time, when it is common knowledge that the egg whites are "better" the longer they are whipped. There is such a belief, but it is wrong when it comes to the crusts for the Reformation. A long whisking of egg whites is recommended for sponge biscuits-crust, for puff pastry and some other varieties of crust that should be dried in the oven, not baked. Reform crusts are good dry, but they are better when juicy. While baking, they grow a little, and when they cool, their thickness will be about 1 cm. If you beat the egg whites for 10 minutes instead of 3.5, the crusts will grow even more while baking, but will return to 1 cm thick after cooling. Then why would you waste time and beat the crap out of you for 10 minutes? Sometimes it happens that the crust falls below 1 cm thick, or becomes twice as thin, and this means that your walnuts are moist. Wet nuts are recognized as you grind them. They turn into noodles instead of crumbs. The smaller these crumbs are, the drier the nuts are, and the thicker the crust will be. However, this is not something that should worry you much. Any crust thickness is perfectly fine when it comes to Reforma. The very thin ones will be wetter, and the airy ones will be drier, but both have their advantages. Whatever crusts you end up with, Reforma will still be a perfect cake, if you make the filling correctly.

4. Melting the margarine to remove the water

  • You will have to decide whether to put butter or margarine in the filling yourself. Margarine is obtained by hydrogenation of vegetable oils. It turns out that hydrogenation is harmful if you choose to live solely on margarine. You should find margarine with a neutral smell and pleasant taste, and you should not exaggerate the amount. Such margarine tightens the filling better than butter, and it is 4 times cheaper, and butter again has its other advantages in that it is healthier. Namely, if you want to make a good Reforma, you will have to use only fat from margarine, and you will throw away the water.

How to remove water from margarine?

  • Easy. Melt the margarine in a pan, let it stand for about 10 minutes, the fat will float to the top, and the water will remain at the bottom. You can pour the fat into another container and throw away the water, or put everything back in the fridge, and when the fat hardens, take it out and spill the water. You will see that even if you manage to cook the egg yolk of the perfect density, it will not be worth anything if you pour 50 ml of water into such a perfect filling. Everything will thin out, and the filling will ooze. And that's exactly what would happen if you inserted the original 250 g margarine package. Add to that the fact that this water is cloudy and full of some brown sediment. It says on the butter that it has 16%, but I wouldn't rely too much on the truth of what is written on the declaration.

  • To the most persistent ones who are still reading this post, I want to congratulate them on their patience and endurance. It paid off, because I'm just moving on to the process of making the filling for Reforma.

Fill:

  • 10 egg yolks / 190 g

  • 190 g of sugar

  • 250 g of butter/margarine, i.e. about 200 g of pure fat, without water

  • 70 g of cooking chocolate

NOTE:

  • The amount of yolks is of crucial importance for the length of cooking. That's why in the recipe, I give you a precise measurement in grams

  • Instead of explaining to you how thick you should cook the egg yolk to achieve the ideal thickness, I will explain how long you should cook it to achieve the ideal thickness.

  • Time is a factor that will determine density.

  • First and foremost, you must know that the cooking time for 10 egg yolks does not apply to 20 egg yolks - 20 egg yolks cook twice as long! Another important thing is the temperature.

  • Although we will steam the yolk, it is not the same whether the yolk will be cooked in a large pot or a small one. For the first time, use a large hot plate of 18 cm and two pans, one of which will have a diameter of 18 cm and will match the hot plate, and which will be used to put a small pan, with a diameter of 15 cm, in it, while the water is boiling gently, in which we will cook fill. I believe that this kind of precision is not really necessary, and I'm pretty sure that even with pans of similar size, the results would be almost the same.

5. Beating egg yolks with sugar

  • If you have removed the water from the margarine or butter, and provided pure fat, turn on the hotplate to 6 (on a scale of 1-6) and place a pan with about 5 cm of water on it. Until the water boils, put the egg yolks in a small saucepan, add sugar and beat with a mixer for no longer than 30 seconds. It doesn't need anything special to be foamy, just well whipped. Any longer whisking will create more foam in the egg yolks and melt more sugar, and therefore the egg yolk will become thicker, which will affect the cooking time. The length of whisking of egg yolks and sugar determines the steaming time. Here is an extreme example. If the egg yolks were beaten for 15 minutes, the sugar would almost melt and a thick foamy cream would be created. Steaming would take only 3-4 minutes, which I believe is not enough time for all fans of thermal processing of egg yolks. Here is a brief explanation of how to do it.

6. Cooking the yolk

  • If you have beaten the egg yolks, wait for the water in the pot to boil, then place the pot with the egg yolks in the boiling water. I believe it doesn't matter, but just in case, let the small pot be submerged in the boiling water, without touching the bottom of the large pot. Maybe this is an exaggeration, but just in case, do it like this. Be sure to look at the clock and start measuring the time, regardless of the fact that the boiling water will stop boiling the moment you put the pot in it. The time is measured from the moment you put the pot with egg yolks into the boiling water. You don't need to stir continuously for the first two minutes. Only occasionally. Stir with a whisk, this is the easiest way to feel the difference in density, while the egg yolks are cooking and setting.


Here are the changes that occur as the egg yolks and sugar are steamed.

- 3 minutes, the yolks have become hot.

- 4 minutes, the sugar has dissolved and is not visible in the form of dots, but you can still feel it under the pressure cooker at the bottom, more like the rustling of the pressure cooker on the bottom.

- 6 minutes, the sugar has completely melted and the egg yolks begin to thicken. Hardly, but they're starting.

- 8 minutes, the egg yolks are thick enough to pour margarine into them, but this would be the so-called "juicy" Reforma, at room temperature the filling would ooze out of it.

- 12 minutes, the egg yolks are so thick that you will get a filling that will be difficult to spread.

Conclusion:

  • For an ideal filling, the egg yolks are boiled for 10 minutes.

When you see that the sugar has dissolved and that they have started to slightly tighten, you can be sure that you are very close to the end of cooking. Sometimes it's literally another minute, and sometimes another 10 minutes, but when the yolks reach the density of honey, and that thick honey, then they are definitely ready.

7. Combining egg yolks, margarine and chocolate

  • After 10 minutes, remove the pan from the heat and add hot, melted margarine/butter. Beat briefly with a mixer, and you will see how a thick emulsion is created. Then add the chocolate, stir until it melts, and mix briefly again.

  • If it happens to you that the margarine will not combine with the egg yolks, as in the next picture, which is usually the case with overcooked egg yolks (12 minutes of cooking or more), feel free to put chocolate in it, stir/mix, and if the filling doesn't even then, after of mixing, if it doesn't want to come together, add a little milk and beat again with the mixer. Then it should come together.

  • Unfused filling: the yolk and fat are visibly separated after adding the chocolate and mixing briefly, the filling came together and became smooth.

8. Filling

  • The filling should be cooled to the point that it does not leak when spread, but that the spread is not difficult, and it will be like that when it reaches room temperature and is not even lukewarm. That cooling will take a couple of hours.

  • Take the crust that you baked by the end of the baking paper, tilt it slightly and slide it onto the work surface. Divide it into 4 parts, along the long side. It will be a small cake and 4 crusts will be enough. Larger cakes should have 5-6 crusts. Cut the crust with a sharp knife so that you cut through not only the crust but also the baking paper on which the crust rests.

  • Move the first of the 4 crusts to a tray or board, leaving the paper on the bottom side. Spread with a third of the filling.

  • Place the second crust on top of the first, filed, and lower it so that the paper remains on the upper side, then carefully remove the paper. Spread the second third of the filling. Do this until the last crust, but do not fill it, do not even remove the paper from it. Put the cake in the freezer to set, and the next day you will level it and top it.

-If you are making a Reform cake for the first time and you are not used to determining the density of the filling, it might not be a bad idea to prepare two boards the length of Reforma, or to cut two strips of thick cardboard, cover them with plastic film, and use them to secure the cake. These stoppers should be placed on the sides of the cake and somehow fixed in that position.

This is necessary because it may happen that your Reform wants to slip, so it is better to prevent than to cure.

9. Overflow

  • You can handle the cake relatively easily now that it is frozen. Remove the paper and turn it upside down so that the bottom side is up. This side is flatter and the cake will look nicer after the frosting. Remove the other paper as well. Now is the time to flatten it nicely with a knife and get straight edges. You can use the leftovers to possibly fill some holes left after leveling, or eat them.

Now you can make the dressing.

  • 10 ml of milk

  • 1 spoon of sugar

  • 1 egg

  • 50 g of margarine

  • 100 g of chocolate

-Dissolve sugar in milk and add margarine. When it also melts, pour the egg that you have slightly beaten with a mixer into the boiling mixture, and immediately remove it from the heat. Beat a little more with the mixer to cool the heated bottom of the pot, and then add 100 g of chocolate. When the chocolate melts, combine everything with a mixer, then pour the hot dressing over the cake. With a knife, stretch it so that it oozes over the edges and then work the edges by smoothing out the oozing parts of the topping. Return the cake to the refrigerator to set the frosting.

Regardless of the fact that it is an extremely small amount of dressing, my advice is to work with a mixer. Put all that in a small pot, then remove one brush of the mixer, if both cannot fit in such a container, and mix with only one brush. This is a tip that will ensure that neither the chocolate nor the eggs form lumps, because lumps are the enemy of any frosting.

That is all!

problems-in-kitchen-counseling
Tips for making Reform Cakes and Others

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS AND DILEMMA

Egg whites on hold?

  • The beaten egg white batter must be immediately poured into the pan and leveled. After that, it must immediately go into the oven. Whipped cream to which walnuts have been added - it must not stand. Any standing longer than 5 minutes will manifest itself in the separation of water at the bottom of the tray, and when the crust is baked it will be a gelatinous mass. It's not terrible, but it's better if the crust is without those "extras". And the filling will adhere better to the crust if its surface is drier.

Yolk on hold?

  • The situation is similar with egg yolks. When the sugar is poured into the egg yolks, there is no more unrolling. It must be whipped immediately and steamed. Sugar collects water wherever it sees it. It will pick up water from the egg yolks, and where the sugar has drawn out the water, they will harden and lumps will form. As if the yolks were partially cooked. The long whisking of egg yolks with sugar, which we have already talked about, also works on this principle. Of course, there are no lumps there, but by whipping it cold, the sugar draws out the water and that's why the whole mixture thickens even without cooking. Such a mixture is perfectly fine, let's face it, but it is difficult to determine how much more cooking it needs, so I insisted on stirring for 30 seconds. Therefore, if you want to store egg yolks in the refrigerator for later use, do not pour sugar into them. Cover them with a plastic bag and put them in the fridge. So I can stand for 48 hours without any problems. Do not freeze egg yolks in the freezer. It does not bother the whites at all, and the yolks also thicken from freezing.

Steaming?

  • It is interesting that steam cooking is still necessary even today at the time of precise temperature setting on the stove. While the stoves were wood-burning, this was completely understandable and necessary, but today?! Why don't we use a small hotplate and plug it into 2 of the 6 sections? The answer is simple. It is not enough to turn on at 2 because it is not yet 100°C. And if you turn it to 3 it's too strong. The egg yolks start to catch at the bottom of the pan, which feels nice under the pressure cooker. That's why we still have to use the steam cooking method.

Walnuts or almonds?

  • This trick is up to you. The advice I can give you is this. If you decide to make a crust from almonds, do not blanch them, peel them, dry them and grind them. Peeled almonds are completely tasteless. The taste of the cake was reduced to the taste of the filling. If you work with ground unpeeled almonds, that's a different story. You will get a milder cake than if you had decided to use walnuts. Many criticize the Reforma for being strong. They will surely like this variant with almonds more. There is another interesting thing about almond skins. Almonds are much drier than walnuts, and less oily. When you grind it with a nut grinder, you get much finer particles, almost almond powder. The crusts you bake from this powder, under the same conditions as you bake walnut crusts, will be more airy. It will hardly fall by a single millimeter. This is precisely why the cake itself will be taller and airier. Almond bark will always be lighter than walnut bark. There are many reasons to try both almonds and walnuts, so you can decide for yourself which is better in your opinion and taste.

- Personally, I like the skins with walnuts better. But I know a lot of people who claim the opposite. Almost the best solution is to make a mixture of almonds and walnuts, and shake it into a mixture of egg whites. One thing is certain. Reform will always be the perfect cake.


Juicy Reform or solid Reform?

  • On the cover picture is a more rigid Reform. It is beautiful, but the juicy Reforma is tastier. The difference is only in the firmness of the filling, ie. the length of cooking the yolk, and those ideal 10 minutes refer to the filling for the juicy Reforma. Of course, it is juicy and softer, so you will make your job much easier if you cut it while it is frozen, and at the time of serving, just go through the cut. Reforma is relatively easy to cut even in the frozen state, because it is never too hard. It is not terrible to cut it unfrozen, but chilled, then you will get a messier cut, but you make juicy Reforma for the perfect taste, not the perfect cut.

  • Use the contact form for questions or advice.

  • I would be happy if you would comment on my recipes and put like.

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