Cake - Number Cake or Alphabet Cake

A Number Cake, also called a Cream Tart or Alphabet Cake.

This is such a trendy way to celebrate a birthday, anniversary, or new year!

These number "cakes" are really more like cookie tarts since the base is made of crisp shortbread with creamy filling rather than a more traditional sponge cake with buttercream.

Ingredients:

For the crust:

300g (2.5 cups – 1 tbsp) flour

75g (⅝ cup) ground almond

75g (2/3 cup) powdered sugar

200g (7.05 oz) cold butter

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch salt

For the cream:

400g (14.1 oz) mascarpone or cream cheese

400ml (1⅔ cups) heavy cream

150g (1⅓ cups) powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

For decoration:

Macaroons, strawberries, raspberries, meringue Kisses, chocolates, flowers and more.

Method:

In a food processor, process cold cubed butter, flour, ground almond, powdered sugar and pinch salt. Process until crumbs are formed. Add egg and vanilla extract, process until dough is formed.

Transfer the dough to a work surface, pat into a ball and flatten into a disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 180C/375F

Roll out the dough on a parchment paper. Refrigerate for 30 minutes and cut your number/letter/shape. From the leftovers roll again the dough, refrigerate for 30 minutes and cut another number/letter/shape. For one cake you will need two layers of biscuit.

Bake for 10-13 minutes or until slightly golden in the edges. Let cool completely.

Make the cream: in a large bowl beat mascarpone and powdered sugar. Beat until smooth. Add vanilla extract and heavy cream and beat to stiff peaks. Transfer to a piping bag.

Pipe the mascarpone cream over the first biscuit, then gently place the second biscuit on top. Pipe the remaining cream and decorate as you like.

Note:

Freezing a cake for a short time will help make the cake moist and delicious. Even professional decorators freeze their cakes because they say it helps the cakes hold their shape and not turn into a giant pile of crumbs when you add the weight of frosting and decorations.