Slice of Butterless Buttercream Cake with Hazelnut Pralines
Last night, the reward for my dessert effort was Lewis telling me that he hadn’t had a piece of cake since he was thirteen: that was after he had just finished a large piece of butterless buttercream cake that I made for him for his birthday. As I’ve said before, and upon more than one occasion, having Lewis over for dinner can be a challenge. He doesn’t eat meat, he shies away from all dairy products, no cheese, no milk, no cream (no cream??), and no butter. Making sauces when Lewis is around is a lot of fun; he makes me go places I ordinarily wouldn’t go. The same can be said about a cake for him. So here’s what did for Lewis’ birthday cake:
First I made a génoise sponge. I’ve tried various formulas, and for the past twelve years or so I’ve stuck with Rose Bernanbaum’s classic génoise, right out of the Cake Bible. For Lewis’ cake I also made two layers of meringue with hazelnut praline. So far no butter. Now for the butterless buttercream. Rosaria picked up several large mangoes last week. Sure, I know I made mango buttercream a couple of weeks ago, but these mangoes had to be used. So I peeled them, sliced them off the pith, coarsely chopped them, and put them in a large sauce pan with two tablespoons of honey. I cooked them for about twenty minutes over high heat, stirring almost continuously. The object is to have caramelized mango, not burnt mango. Once the mango pulp was caramelized, I remove it from the heat, allowed it to cool, then puréed it in a food processor and strained into a bowl.
Butterless buttercream:
~ 6 egg yolks
~ 1/2 cup corn syrup
~ 150 grams sugar
~ 115 grams of hazelnut praline
(preferably homemade)
~ 454 grams of Earth Balance butter substitute
~ 3 T Cointreau
Put the egg yolks in a mixing bowl and beat them until they’re light in color and fluffy, about 5 minutes at high speed. Put the corn syrup and the sugar in a nonstick sauce pan and heat over high heat until the sugar is dissolved and there are roiling bubbles over the surface of the mixture. Take it off the heat. Stop the mixer, pour about a third of the syrup-sugar mixture onto the egg yolks and immediately start beating again. Repeat two more times until all the syrup-sugar mixture is beaten into the eggs. Keep beating until the bottom of the mixing bowl feels cool to the touch, at least five minute. In the meantime, make sure that the Earth Balance butter substitute is at room temperature. Once the mixing bowl feels cool, start beating in the Earth Balance, one large tablespoon at a time, until all of it is incorporated. Amazingly, the texture of the finished butterless buttercream is very close to real buttercream. At this point I added my mango purée and the Cointreau. I then set the mixing bowl with the butterless buttercream in the refrigerator for an hour or so.
Finally, I assembled my cake. First I trimmed the meringue disks with the bottom of my spring-form used for baking the génoise, to insure that the génoise and the meringue layers are the same size. Next I sliced the génoise into three layers. Starting with the bottom layer of the génoise which I put on a plate, I spread a generous amount of the butterless buttercream and evened it out with a cake spatula. Next I placed a meringue layer with a generous amount of the butterless buttercream spread on top. I continued alternating génoise layers with the remaining meringue layer. Lastly, I iced the exterior of the cake with the remaining butterless buttercream. It certainly was a beautiful cake and one that even Lewis would eat.
1 comment
Did you save me some? There goes my diet.