Daring Bakers – Almond Gateaux with Praline Buttercream

Another month and another Daring Bakers Challenge and my 100th post. This month Chris at Mele Cotte challenged us to make Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream from Great Cakes by Carol Walter. I read the recipe and gulped. I re read and gulped again. I then remembered that I was after all a Daring Baker and I was going to be daring about this cake, I remember the age old question to ask when faced with a daunting task.

Q. How do you eat an elephant?
A. With a teaspoon.

Not that I am advocating eating elephants, but everything can be broken down into manageable amounts and that was what I was going to do with this cake. The recipe was very well written and was broken down into very manageable stages, many of which I have mastered before.

Nut Genoise

– not really that different from madeleines in making the batter
Sugar syrup – hard to go wrong on
Praline – I have made before
Swiss buttercream – I can make meringues in my sleep, could it really be that hard? I did have a slight fear of it as the talented and lovely Abby had told me of her previous disaster with it.
Fruit glaze – I admit I completely forgot it
Chocolate Ganache – I had made this before for truffles, I had never iced with it, but needed to learn.

I made a few changes. I used almonds not hazelnuts, I also completely forgot to toast and skin them, it did affect the colour making a darker genoise than others’ cakes.

I baked 2/3 of the genoise recipe using 5 egg yolks and 4 whites. (this was not quite 2/3 but worked very well)

I made half the buttercream and did not have enough to decorate the top of the cake so I used almonds.

Verdict

This cake took me an afternoon and an evening to make. I made the praline, buttercream and cake on one afternoon, then made the ganache and put the cake together the following evening.

I can honestly say that the hardest part was slicing the cake into 3 layers. I did it by having Ed hold the cake on its side and me cutting very carefully and slowly.

The idea of putting the cake on a cardboard circle on a cooling tray to pour the ganache over made things far far easier. I am annoyed with myself for running out of buttercream and having to decorate with nuts.

I greatly enjoyed the cake, and felt very proud of myself for making it, it was a real achievement for me. We both loved it and my colleagues were in raptures over it (when I got home with the empty box Ed was most put out and asked why we had not kept it all for ourselves) .

I would bake it again; I am sure that the second try would take less time, but only for a very special occasion or friend.

Many thanks to Chris for organising this and to Lis and Yvonne the Daring Bakers Founders.

For the original recipe please see Chris’s blog.

It is the start of Cowes week tomorrow and I am slightly amused that I am a Daring Baker in the kitchen and daring on the sea as the class of boat I am sailing on is a Daring!