Tags
baking, caramel marscapone, creamy, dacquoise, dates, dessert, food, gluten free, layer cake, sweet, toasted walnuts, yum
I’ve been wanting to make this cake for awhile and decided I would make it for the Aspiring Bakers #18 Layers of Love challenge hosted by Sam over at Sweet Samsations. She has such an inspiring blog with wonderful recipes and gorgeous pictures of said recipes! The challenge is for a layer cake that must have at least three layers. Cake is not my favorite dessert, I do enjoy it every so often but I haven’t baked one in a long time. What to do? I want to join the challenge but I don’t want to bake a traditional flour cake with overly sweet frosting. Hmmmmm……
I recently found a Williams Sonoma cake book at a thrift store. I can’t remember which recipe caught my eye, but all of them were classic recipes and I needed a good cake book to add to my collection. This is where the original idea for this dacquoise came from. What is dacquoise? It is usually almond or hazelnut meringue “cake” layered traditionally with buttercream or whipped cream. This recipe called for toasted walnuts! Why not? I also didn’t want to use buttercream because again, I don’t really like it. I can usually taste too much of the butter.
Then I remembered the caramel marscapone frosting I made for the Pierre Hermes Apricot Lime Financier Cake. That was not too sweet, had a little burnt sugar taste and would go well with toasted walnuts. As I was making it the thought of dates went through my head, their sweetness, the deep subtle flavor they would add, why not?
The Recipe adapted from the Williams Sonoma Cakes, Cupcakes & Cheesecakes book.
- 75 g plus 60 g walnuts, lightly toasted
- 180 g sugar
- 1 Tb cornstarch
- 3 large egg whites (room tempurature)
- 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
- about 1/4 cup chopped dates (I didn’t measure sorry)
- Caramel marscapone frosting (find the Pierre Hermes recipe here)
Toast the walnuts in a 350 oven for about 10 minutes, and put 75 g in a food processor with 60 g of the sugar and the cornstarch. Process to a fine grind.
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Draw three 8 inch circles onto the parchment in pencil. One 8 inch circle on one sheet and two on the other. Make sure to turn the parchment over so the circles are visible but so you won’t get pencil transfered onto your meringue. Preheat the oven to 250. Combine the egg whites and cream of tartar in a mixer and mix on med until soft peak form. Add in the remaining 120 g of sugar and continue beating until stiff, glossy peaks form. Gently fold in the nut mixture. Divide the mixture onto the three circles. (you can pipe the circles if you want). Bake for 1 hour 20 mins until crisp and golden. Let cool on the baking sheets for 10 minutes, remove from parchment and then let cool on racks.
Meanwhile I made the caramel marscapone frosting. This cake has to sit in the refrigerator overnight to let the meringues soften and my cake plate is too large to fit in the refrigerator with everything else in there. I decided to cover a piece of cardboard with aluminum foil and transfer the cake to the fancy plate in the morning. Bad idea, the cake stuck to the foil….because I put some frosting on the foil to anchor the meringue.
Frost the first meringue and sprinkle with the chopped dates. There’s no correct amount to use, whatever your taste likes. I thought the amount I used was perfect, it added an unrecogniseable flavor that was not overpowering or oversweet.
Put the next meringue layer over this and frost, sprinkle this layer with some chopped, toasted walnuts.
Add the final meringue and frost the top and sides. Press chopped walnuts on the sides of the cake and decorate with walnut halves on the top. Cover and refrigeratove overnight. Bring to room tempurature before serving.
The taste and texture are wonderful. It has a smooth creamyness with just a little crunch. The carmel marscapone frosting has a slight bitter edge which is offset nicely by the sweetness of the dates and the toasted walnut flavor tops it off perfectly.
The foil not only made the cake stick to it, it also ripped and stuck to the piece I cut. I hope this qualifies as a layer cake! If I find the time and, more importantly, the inspiration, I will try a completely different, more traditional layer cake and submit that as well.
Matina!! That cake is GORGEOUS! My bf would definitely be drooling over this! Meringue is his absolute favourite!! 😀 hehe.. Yeah, I have that book too! I love your frosting and decoration here! Thanks for your the mention and your sweet words!! btw, your last name is so long! lol. What’s your heritage? I remember you mentioned Greek from the bagels! hehe..
Thanks Sam! Yes I’m half Greek and the other half is that mix called American! Which means a combination of many things. In my case it’s Irish, Polish, British and some German I believe. Since my dad was born and raised in Greece that was the biggest influence. We still have family there and visit often so it’s my second home. But I was born and raised in California and now live near Seattle!
ooh! You’re not too far from me then. I love Seattle! Need to go down to Walmart to buy lots of butter, cream cheese and whipping cream again! hehehe.. Yeah, “American” is always an interesting composition!
Where are you? Yes I think I was born in the perfect place for me. Where else can you eat foods from almost every culture fairly easily?!?!!
I’m in Vancouver, B.C.!! just 3 hours away from you. lol. I’d go down for Allegiant Airlines though! 😀 They always have great deals!!!
Looks delicious! I was going to bake this weekend but ran out of time! This challenge is really something I want to do 🙂
Sometimes it’s so hard to find the time which is a shame. I really hope you make something, I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
What an exotic and delicious cake – I like it very much my friend 😀
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
Aw thank you! I used our favorite, no not chocolate, dates!!!
Dacquoise is one of my absolute favourite kinds of cake – it’s light yet rich and intense all at once and you can scale the indulgence and sweetness up and down as you see fit. I also recently made something called a marjolaine which works along similar lines and was delicious. This looks lovely – great job!
Thanks! I’m not familiar with marjolaine. Did you post it?
That looks soooo good!!! x
Thanks! It really was yummy.
Your cake looks decadent! I hope to find time to participate in Sam’s aspiring cake challenge too. Love the layers of meringue in your cake.
Oh I hope you make a cake for the challenge. I love seeing what other people come up with! It is time consuming and I always forget to take pictures in the beginning steps…but it’s worth it in the results!
Looks so delicious! Wish I could try some 😀
Wouldn’t that be great if you could not only read about a food but get a sample?!
Wow.. did this ever turn out!! It’s gorgeous and very unique.. I’ve heard of a Dacquoise but never made one!
It’s a nice change from a regular type of cake and for people who can’t eat gluten I suppose. You should try making one! You can use almost any type of nut, almond, hazelnut, pistachio….
Interesting cake and flavours, yours look really wonderful and delicious!
Thanks! I love dates.
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