Chocolate & Egg Liqueur Cake
Posted by in FoodFor our family Easter get-together I tried two new recipes today - well, I already started yesterday. One was a Martha Stewart recipe for Cannolis. I had Cannolis for the very first time last year in Boston when Sarah made me stand in line for what felt like forever to get the treats from "the best place in Boston". No idea what that bakery was called, but DAMN they were good! Unfortunately this recipe wasn't that good: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/classic-cannoli-2
In the end the shells tasted good, but I had to add A LOT more liquid to make the dough somewhat workable. I had prepared the shells yesterday, so they were ready to go, but the filling was a complete disaster today, so as a last minute substitute I used a very light and fluffy stracciatella dessert, which I think worked very well.
If you can recommend another recipe, I'd be happy to try it!
But now back to recipe No. 2 for today: Chocolate & Egg Liqueur Cake. I took this picture a second before we started cutting it, so it's not the best, but you get an idea of the decorations I made:
And this is how the cake would have looked if I hadn't screwed it up at the last minute:
Recipe: Chocolate and Carrot Easter Cake with Egg Liqueur
Ingredients
- For the base:
2 carrots (250g / 0,5 pounds)
3 eggs
100g / 3,5 oz sugar
1 pinch of salt
50g / 1,8 oz flour
150g / 5,3 oz ground almondsfor the dark cream:
250ml / 1 cup heavy cream
75g / 2,6 oz sugar
3 sheets gelatine
100g / 3,5 oz dark chocolate (70%)for the light cream:
4 sheets gelatine
3 egg yolks
75g / 2,6 oz powdered sugar
150ml / 5 fl oz egg liqueur
200ml / 6,8 fl oz heavy creamdecorations as needed
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven - 180°C / 350°F. Peel and finely grate the carrots. Separate egg whites and yolks. Beat the egg yolks with 1/3 of the sugar until fluffy. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until very stiff. Then slowly add the remaining sugar. Mix flour and almonds. Fold the egg whites into the egg yolk mix, then add the carrots and the flour/almonds mix. Fill the dough into a 21cm / 8,2 inch baking form and bake for about 20 minutes. Let cool down in the form.
- Put a large cookie cutter in the shape of a bunny (about 2-3 cm / 1 inch high) on a tray. Soak the gelatine for 5 minutes in cold water. Mix cream and sugar and bring to a boil. Take pot off the stove, wring out gelatine and stir into the hot cream. Grate or chop the chocolate and stir into the cream until molten. Let cool down and stir occasionally until it starts to thicken. Then fill into the cookie cutter form and put in the freezer for 1 hour.
- For the light cream soak gelatine in cold water for 5 minutes. Beat egg yolks, powdered sugar and egg liqueur in a double-boiler until thick and creamy. Wring out gelatine and stir into the mix. Whisk the heavy cream until it's almost stiff, then fold into the egg mix.
- Carefully extract the chocolate cream from the cookie cutter and place in the middle of the carrot cake base. Place a cake ring around the cake and spread the light cream around the bunny. Let cool in a fridge for 2-3 hours. Take off the cake ring and decorate.
Quick Notes
We didn't have a cookie cutter that was large enough, so instead we used 6 large round cutters. But then the balance between light and dark cream was off and we ended up covering the whole cake with the yellow cream. Make sure to work fast after you've added the gelatine or you will end up with a thick pudding instead of a smooth surface.
In the original recipe they simply decorated the cake with some thin chocolate sheets all around. We did that too, but since we didn't have the big bunny sticking out we added a bunch of other stuff. I colored some plain marzipan with Dutch-processed cocoa powder and cut out some smaller bunnies, then added some marzipan carrots I bought in the supermarket. It's a good way to "mark" the slices so you'll know where to cut the cake later. I colored more marzipan with green and red food coloring and cut out some small flowers, and last but not least we ground some pistachios and used it as grass.
Recipe by Johann Lafer found in several German magazines.
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