Desserts Week.
One bake was easy the other was not. There was a roulade which was fairly simple but the marjolaine (recipe taken from the GBBO site) was certainly worthy of being a technical challenge.
As I had never made one before I used the Leith’s Baking Bible for the recipe. It was quite simple to put together but I didn’t watch my cream and over-mixed the first time. Second cream attempt was fine and it looked good until the rolling time. This can be a bit tricky but using either baking paper or a cloth to help roll helps so much. Don’t try to do it with just your hands. Mine did crack but a sprinkling of icing sugar helped the appearance.
The taste was nice but at first I thought it was under baked as it was such a light bake. My other half had finished his slice before I could even voice my concerns so if it was under baked it tasted good. Neither of us were ill so it must have been baked enough.
The next bake was the Marjolaine. On hearing the name I wasn’t sure what it was but I did recognize it. This bake took me 5 hours in total. A few set backs due to errors but there are quite a few steps that need to be focused on individually. This is not an easy ‘lets just make a cake’ type of bake. To be honest it was a pain in the backside and I don’t want to make another one for long time.
The first stage was a nut/sugar mixture which is very finely ground and mixed with whisked egg whites. This was then spread between two trays and baked to get lovely nut meringues. A while later (waiting for the meringues to cool) it was time to make chocolate ganache which is always tempting to lick from the bowl but I behaved.
Praline was to be made next but I burnt my caramel and got rather annoyed. Since I had been working on the cake for three hours already I took a break and started again the next day. The following day I burnt more caramel but was determined to get it right. I had used two manual sugar thermometers for the last batches and they both burnt so it was time to try the battery powered one. This lead to a caramel that worked and a realization that the two thermometers don’t work.
Carrying on with the bake I added nuts to the caramel and left to cool. Once cold it was crushed into a fine powder and added in to freshly made French buttercream.
French buttercream is my new favourite and I need to make more cakes with this. If you are a big icing fan this needs to be tried.
Assembling the cake was my favourite part. Layer the meringues with buttercream and ganache. Cover all over with the cream and cover the sides with toasted almonds. To finish, pipe the rest of the ganache around the top of the cake with some diagonal stripes and fill in the spaces with hazelnuts and pistachios.
After 5 hours in total it was finished and looked quite good. I won’t be making one again for a long time but I’m glad I got through that challenge.