Speculoos Sheet Cake

This is my Birthday cake. 

End of November mixes Christmas spices with regular cake flavours. It took me several days to decide what kind of cake I wanted to bake. So much to choose from.

This recipe is from Dr.Oetker. The good thing is, most work is best the day before. Only the decorative topping is done short before serving. There are 3 layers and each one takes time to finish and 2 need to cool down completely.

Recipe for a 30x40 cm sheet cake dish.

Start with the 2nd layer first, it takes the longest time to cool.

1 kg apples, 500 ml apple juice, 1 lemon juiced

100 g slices almonds

2 packages Dr.Oetker vanilla pudding

Peel the apples and slice them in thin slithers. Pour 400 ml apple juice in a big pot and add the lemon juice. Add the apple slithers.

Mix 100 ml apple juice with the 2 vanilla pudding powders very well.

Heat up the apples with the 400 ml juice and lemon and cook them 3 min. Add the pudding mix and bring it to a boil and cook for 1 min until it thickens.

Dry toast the almond slices in a pan, cool them down. Mix them in the hot apples and cool the pot completly down. That will take a lot of time.

Preheat the oven 180 C.

1st layer Sponge :

6 eggs

200 g sugar

1 package vanilla sugar  or 2 tsp

100 g flour

Pinch of salt

200 g almond flour

4 flat tsp baking powder

2 tsp speculoos spice

In a kitchen machine bring the eggs up to speed. Gradually add the sugars and beat on medium high speed until it triples in volume.

In a bowl mix the dry ingredients and carefully fold them in the egg mix. Butter the sheet cake dish and fill in the cake batter. Smooth it out. Bake for 20 min and let it cool in the pan on a wire rack.

3 rd layer Cream filling:

500 ml double cream - very cold

3 packs cream stabilzer

50 g sugar

500 g quark or ricotta or dried cottage cheese

1 package vanilla sugar

1 tsp specoloos spice

Beat the cream with the sugars in a standmixer with the stabilzer. Add the quark and the spice. Pour on top of the apples and smooth it out.

Decoration:

A couple of hours before serving, place Specoloos cookies on top.