Sand cake

"Don't be a bad cake, be a good cake"...


This is something most Finnish kids say (in Finnish though) after filling a bucket with sand, turning it over, and hitting the bottom of the bucket with a sand shovel. :) 

This time, I made an actual edible version of this "sand cake"


This became my holiday cake, as although it doesn't yet feel that way, my summer holiday starts tomorrow. Originally I planned to make a cake that would have represented a sandy beach, as I wanted to try edible sand on a cake. At some point the beach turned into a bucket of sand, and the next idea was to make a bucket shaped cake which had sand in it. Due to lack of time, that idea was simplified even further, and the cake became a very basic sand cake from my childhood.


(the sand toys behind the cake are just photo props, as I didn't have time to make edible versions :) )



I tried a peach flavoured filling for this cake. We'll see how that goes down with my colleagues tomorrow... :)



Peach filling: (for a 6 egg cake)

230 g       canned peaches in juice
                     (NB! 230 g is the net weight for the peaches! Of course you can also use fresh peaches)
150 g       peach flavoured quark
3,5 dl       double cream
5              gelatin leaves
2 tbsp      fruit juice or water


Put the gelatin leaves into cold water to soak for 5-10 minutes. 
Drain peaches and puree them. Mix in the quark.
Whip the cream.
When the gelatin leaves are soft, squeeze out excess water and and melt them with boiling hot juice or water. Add the gelatin mix into the peach quark mix and stir well. Add whipped cream and mix until smooth.



How to make a sand cake:

Bake two different size cakes (I used 15cm and 20cm tins)

Cut the cake bases into discs as usual, place on top of each other
and cut into rough shape

Fill the cake, cover with cling film and place in the fridge to set
(I used a partition board between the two cakes so that the cake would eventually be easier to cut into portions. You can see pictures of how to do that here)

Once the cake is set, carve it into its final shape and cover with buttercream

Crush different colour biscuits with a blender into fine powder.
You can also mix in different colour sugars,
which make the biscuit sand glisten like the real deal

Cover the buttercream with biscuit sand and decorate for example
with sugar fondant stones or clams if you want