So, I’ve been on a mission to perfect the South African Snowball (not to be confused with the Sno-balls from Hostess Cakes), a delicate, fluffy, cake loved by children all over South Africa. Well, I certainly was transfixed with it as a kid. It is basically two domes of white sponge cake sandwiched together with jam, rolled in jam and coconut. Sounds easy, right? But, no. Getting the cake to hold it’s shape once it’s been piped onto the pan, but still remain soft and fluffy, like a good sponge should be, is going to be the end of me. I can tell.
In my continuing saga with the Elusive Snowballs, I attempted a recipe that a benevolent reader directed me to. It was good, but did not have the result I wanted. Taste was great, shape was good, but while that blogger’s recipe said the cakes would be cut in half and then sandwiched together, I had no such possibility of doing that: my batter spread enough that the bottoms were completely flat, so the cakes were just sandwiched directly, no intermediate step of cutting involved. One less step, but obviously not what the recipe intended. I’ll tinker with the recipe and probably add a 1/4 cup more flour and see what gives.
So, round two, in time for turning a year older (hey, what better way to treat yourself than a good snowball experiment?!), I decided to modify a recipe for Madeleines, from Nick Malgieri’s book Perfect Cookies, Cakes, and Chocolate, to see if they would turn into snowballs. There is hope with this recipe, but it’s going to take less work to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine!
Nonetheless, I’ve got a tunnel of fudge cake, some shortbread, brookies (brownie cookies for the uninitiated), and ice cream to help me put on at least five pounds today. So dedicated am I to this goal that I don’t even have pictures of it all…and have no idea when I’ll put any of them up. I’m just a lazy birthday girl!
