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Chocolate-espresso dacquoise
When I have time off -- as I mercifully, finally do right now -- I tend to relax by cooking elaborate food. I don't know why I find this relaxing, but considering it means I end up making things like this, no one has ever complained about how I spend my time.
The recipe for the chocolate-espresso dacquoise turned up in the November/December 2012 issue of Cook's Illustrated, and had we not had a vegan and someone allergic to dairy at Thanksgiving, I'd have probably made this then. Instead, it's coming to dinner at my sister and brother-in-law's tonight.
You start by making a meringue that includes finely ground almonds and hazelnuts. After it cools, you score and cut it into four 3"x10" rectangles that you sincerely hope don't break during the process. (Two of mine did, and a third nearly did. Oh well.) The meringue bits left over from cutting it apart are obviously equivalent to broken cookies and therefore contain no calories.
Once you have the meringue rectangles, you coat three of them with ganache.
The fourth gets a layer of mocha buttercream instead. This buttercream is unlike any other I've made before; you mix it with some pastry cream, which makes it light, silky, and completely addictive. Given enough time and and a total lack of shame, I'd have eaten the entire batch.
Best of all, even though my pastry cream was very slightly broken -- my own fault for not keeping as close an eye on the heat as I should have -- it still worked once whipped into the buttercream.
Once the three ganache-coated meringues are slightly chilled, you put one of them on top of the bottom layer, ganache side down. Coat the top of that one with more buttercream and keep layering until you get to the top. Then turn the whole sucker into a giant buttercream brick of deliciousness and chill again.
Last steps: coating the whole thing in more ganache, then covering the sides in sliced almonds (which thankfully hide the areas the ganache didn't quite cover) and decorating with a line of hazelnuts on top. Mine aren't perfectly skinned, because I can never get them perfect. However, Cook's Illustrated's technique of banging the little buggers around in two bowls (one overturned so you're shaking the hazelnuts around in a makeshift maraca) works better than the old tea towel method, IMO, and is a great way of working out your aggressions.
I haven't tried a slice of this yet; that's for later. But with all these components, how could it be bad?
The recipe for the chocolate-espresso dacquoise turned up in the November/December 2012 issue of Cook's Illustrated, and had we not had a vegan and someone allergic to dairy at Thanksgiving, I'd have probably made this then. Instead, it's coming to dinner at my sister and brother-in-law's tonight.
You start by making a meringue that includes finely ground almonds and hazelnuts. After it cools, you score and cut it into four 3"x10" rectangles that you sincerely hope don't break during the process. (Two of mine did, and a third nearly did. Oh well.) The meringue bits left over from cutting it apart are obviously equivalent to broken cookies and therefore contain no calories.
Once you have the meringue rectangles, you coat three of them with ganache.
The fourth gets a layer of mocha buttercream instead. This buttercream is unlike any other I've made before; you mix it with some pastry cream, which makes it light, silky, and completely addictive. Given enough time and and a total lack of shame, I'd have eaten the entire batch.
Best of all, even though my pastry cream was very slightly broken -- my own fault for not keeping as close an eye on the heat as I should have -- it still worked once whipped into the buttercream.
Once the three ganache-coated meringues are slightly chilled, you put one of them on top of the bottom layer, ganache side down. Coat the top of that one with more buttercream and keep layering until you get to the top. Then turn the whole sucker into a giant buttercream brick of deliciousness and chill again.
Last steps: coating the whole thing in more ganache, then covering the sides in sliced almonds (which thankfully hide the areas the ganache didn't quite cover) and decorating with a line of hazelnuts on top. Mine aren't perfectly skinned, because I can never get them perfect. However, Cook's Illustrated's technique of banging the little buggers around in two bowls (one overturned so you're shaking the hazelnuts around in a makeshift maraca) works better than the old tea towel method, IMO, and is a great way of working out your aggressions.
I haven't tried a slice of this yet; that's for later. But with all these components, how could it be bad?