Cooking for Pleasure: No Kings cake
- Patty Schied
- 12 hours ago
- 3 min read
What could be better than a cake shaped into a crown?
By Patty Schied
It’s sad to realize that although No Kings Protests are happening regularly throughout the country, there is no special food to commemorate them. Yet, we have chicken wings for Super Bowl day, turkey for Thanksgiving and barbecue for Memorial Day. We definitely need something apropos to fortify our dedicated, but tired friends post-protest. So I thought a special dessert to be served after the event to our fellow politically disgruntled protesters would be appreciated. When they have thrown off their wet coats and tossed their posters into a corner, they will be hungry and thirsty.
What could be better than a cake shaped into a crown?
Ingredients:
One two-inch cake round of any kind, about 7 to 8 inches in diameter
1 pint heavy cream
1 package of ladyfingers
About a dozen maraschino cherries without stems, dried on paper towels
1 package of frozen blueberries, cherries or raspberries, thawed and drained
Yellow food coloring
Directions:
Because it was about the size I wanted, seven inches in diameter, I made an instant pot cheesecake for the base of the "No Kings cake." But any cake can do. Just cut out an approximately 7- or 8-inch diameter circle of any cake similar to the circumference of a crown to use as your base.
To form the diadem surrounding the cake, I used ladyfingers purchased at my local grocery store. I mixed up about two cups of powdered sugar with some heavy cream to make a stiff paste. Using carefully dried maraschino cherries, I ‘glued’ a cherry on the bottom of each of the ladyfingers. I then spread a thin layer of the powdered sugar paste around the bottom of the cake and carefully placed the lady fingers around the cake to form a crown.
Place the cake in the refrigerator to set while you make the two fillings.
Whip one cup of heavy cream mixed with ¼ cup powdered sugar to stiff peaks. Fold in the berries or
cherries that you are using until the mixture is red and lumpy looking.
Remove cake from the refrigerator and pour the red cream mixture into the center of the crown.
Whip the second cup of cream and powdered sugar, doing your best to add enough food coloring to make it an unpleasant yellow mixture. If you have a pastry tube with a half-inch opening, pipe the yellow cream on top of the red cream, swirling it around. If not, just use a spoon.
Place the cake in the refrigerator until ready to serve.
After the Saturday protest, a formal "severing of the crown" ceremony is appropriate with full participation from your guests. I found using a large Chinese cleaver works great. With one good swing, the entire cake can be cut in half, the two fillings mixing unaesthetically, but viscerally satisfying as they spill out, the diadem decorations collapsing with them into an edible rubble. If you are concerned about your guests' overwhelming enthusiasm, place the cake on a wooden cutting board rather than a dessert plate. Serve with coffee, tea, or better yet, something stronger.
• Patty Schied is a longtime Juneau resident who studied at the Cordon Bleu in London and has written a cookbook. Cooking for Pleasure appears every other week in the Juneau Independent's features. She welcomes questions about her column and recipe ideas at patschied@yahoo.com.
