Recipe: Medal cakes with whipped cream and strawberries

My mom served these delicious pretty "medal" cakes at dinner this weekend and I thought I'd share the recipe (from Mette Blomsterberg at DR1 - Danish link).

Medal cakes with whipped cream and strawberries

Ingredients for 10 cakes

Top and bottom cookies:

300 g flour

100 g powdered sugar

150 g butter at room temp.

1 egg

Vanilla pastry cream:

2½ dl milk

½ vanilla bean

35 g sugar

20 g corn starch

2 egg yolks

Frosting:

150 g powdered sugar

a little water

Decoration:

150 g strawberry jam

4 dl cream (for whipped cream)

Strawberries

Directions for cookies:

Mix all the ingredients together until it makes a smooth dough. Leave it in a cold place for about half an hour. Then roll the dough thin and cut out 20 circles (approx. 7 cms) using a cookie cutter or a glass. Bake the circles on baking sheet at 200 °C for 8-10 minutes. Let them cool off on a wire rack.

Directions for vanilla pastry cream:

Heat 2 dl of the milk in a sauce pan. Scrape out the vanilla seeds from the vanilla bean and mix them with the sugar so that the seeds are seperated. Mix the vanilla/sugar with corn starch and the rest of the milk. Finally, add the egg yolk and mix well. When the milk reaches boiling point, pour the mixed ingredients into the sauce pan. Mix consistently until the cream thickens, then pour the cream into a container and let it cool off in the fridge for at least two hours.

Directions for assembly:

Whip the cream to a nice, soft whipped cream. Put it in a piping bag with a star tip and spray around twice on each of the 10 bottom cookies. Place a teaspoon of strawberry jam in the middle of each whipped cream "ring". Fill the rest of the middle with pastry cream. Cover the top cookies with frosting and place them on the whipped cream/pastry cream filling. Finish off with some strawberry slices. Keep in the fridge until ready to serve!