Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2 (212 page)

1 cup (4 ounces) cornstarch measured by scooping dry-measure cup into starch and leveling off

A sieve or sifter set over waxed paper

The chocolate-butter mixture

A rubber spatula

Just as you are ready to blend the various batter elements together, sift the cornstarch onto the paper, check on the chocolate-butter to be sure it is a smooth, thick cream, and give the eggs and sugar a few turns of the beater if they have lost their body.

At slow mixing speed, gradually sprinkle the cornstarch into the egg mixture, taking 15 to 20 seconds to incorporate it but not trying for a perfect blend; you must not deflate the beaten eggs. Remove bowl from stand, if you have that kind of mixer. Fold a large gob of egg mixture into chocolate-butter to lighten it. Then, a large gob at a time, start folding chocolate-butter into eggs, rapidly cutting down through batter and out to side with rubber spatula, rotating bowl, and repeating movement 2 or 3 times. When almost incorporated, add another gob, and continue until all is used. Immediately turn the batter into the prepared pans. Rapidly push batter up sides of pans all around, and bang lightly on table to deflate possible bubbles. Pans should be about ⅔ filled. Place at once in middle level of preheated oven, leaving at least 2 inches of space between pans as well as walls and door of oven.

3)
Baking, filling, and frosting

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Cakes should remain slightly moist, in the French manner, and are done when a skewer or toothpick plunged into center comes out looking oily, with a few speckles of chocolate clinging to it. Cake will usually rise ¼ to ½ inch above rim of pans. Cool for 10 minutes. Top of cakes will crack and flake slightly, which is normal. Make the following filling while cakes are cooling.

the chocolate filling:

3 ounces semisweet baking chocolate

½ ounce unsweetened baking chocolate

3 Tb orange liqueur

4 to 5 Tb unsalted butter, cut into ¼-inch slices

Melt the chocolate in the liqueur over hot water. When perfectly smooth and creamy, beat in the butter piece by piece. If mixture is too soft for easy spreading, beat over iced water until the consistency of mayonnaise.

filling the cake:

A cake rack

A cookie sheet

When cakes have cooled for 10 minutes, run a knife around edge of one to loosen it from the pan and unmold onto cake rack. Peel off waxed paper.

Spread top with filling. Immediately unmold second cake onto one end of cookie sheet. Line up cake on sheet exactly with cake on rack, then slide the one upon the other. Peel paper off top of second cake. If sides are uneven, trim with a knife.

(*)
AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE
: If not to be iced or served immediately, cover airtight as soon as cake is cool or it will dry out. Cake may be frozen at this point; thaw for several hours at room temperature.

4)
Frosting and serving

WHIPPED CREAM
. To serve the cake as a dessert or with tea, spread lightly whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with vanilla or orange liqueur, around and over the cake (
crème Chantilly
, or the
Chantilly meringuée
). Decorate with shaved or grated chocolate.

MERINGUE ICING
. Or use the
plain Italian meringue
(hot sugar syrup whipped into stiffly beaten egg whites), or the
meringue butter cream
.

CHOCOLATE ICING
. Or while the cake is still warm, spread on the same chocolate and butter mixture that you used for the filling, or use one of the chocolate butter creams listed in Volume I, pages 680–4.

  
LE SUCCÈS—LE PROGRÈS, LA DACQUOISE

[Meringue-nut Layer Cake with Butter-cream Frosting and Filling]

This particularly delicious type of French cake rarely appears among American recipes, yet it is far easier to make than a layer cake, and infinitely more elegant. Light yet rich, every mouthful is a poem. This is the kind of pastry you will see in the very best French pastry shops, and it is one that you can duplicate or even improve upon because you need not skimp on ingredients or quality.

To describe the cake, it is layers of baked meringue mounted one upon the other, like a regular layer cake, with filling in between. The meringue layers,
fonds à Succès
, are composed of egg whites and sugar beaten in a machine like any meringue, but when it forms stiff peaks ground almonds are folded in. The meringue is then spread out in disk shapes, heart shapes like our illustrations, or whatever other shapes you wish, and baked, like all meringues, in a very slow oven. The taste and texture of this mixture is, of course, far more interesting than plain meringue and just as easy to make.

HISTORICAL AND PHILOLOGICAL NOTES

While the cooked disks of meringue are called
fonds
, meaning foundations or layers, and
fonds à Succès
when the cake is titled
Le Succès
, you will
see the terms
fonds à Progrès, fonds parisiens, Dacquoise, broyage suisse
, and
gâteau japonais
in French recipe books and elsewhere. Some authorities consider the
Succès
as containing almonds, and the
Progrès
almonds and filberts (
noisettes
, hazelnuts), while the
Dacquoise
is either formula plus starch and butter; other recipes make no distinctions.
Broyage
obviously comes from
broyer
, to grind, and refers to the ground nuts in the meringue;
gâteau japonais
appears to be British for meringue-nut layer cake.

There are various opinions, also, on what should fill and what should frost a
Succès
versus a
Progrès
or a
Dacquoise
. Since no one agrees on anything, you are quite safe in doing whatever you wish. In addition to the frosting and filling in the following recipe, other suggestions are at the
end of it
.

MANUFACTURING NOTE

An electric mixer, even the small hand-held type, makes both the meringue and the butter cream fast and simple to do. Form the meringue disks with a spatula if you have no large canvas pastry bag, but the bag usually makes neater shapes. No-stick baking sheets are especially recommended for meringues, or no-stick baking paper. If your baking sheets are not large enough to hold three 8-inch disks, make 4 smaller disks and a 4- rather than a 3-layer cake. (A discussion of beating egg whites is in the
appendix
, and illustrated directions for beating and folding egg whites are in Volume I, pages 159–61.) You will need toasted almonds and almond
pralin
(caramelized almonds), and do read the recipe through before you plan to make the cake so there will be no surprise ingredients or timings.

A NOTE ON NUTS—FILBERTS

You may use either ground blanched almonds or half and half ground almonds and ground filberts (hazelnuts,
noisettes
) in the following recipe. Filberts are not as easily available here as in France, and the ready-shelled packaged nuts turn rancid rapidly; shelled or ground filberts should be stored in the freezer, as should ground almonds.

To prepare shelled filberts for cooking, first eat a few to be sure they are fresh and fine, then spread the nuts on a baking sheet and dry them out in a 350-degree oven for about 15 minutes, until skins begin to flake off and nut flesh has browned very lightly. Remove from oven, rub nuts a small handful at a time between paper towels to remove as much skin as will easily come off. Grind the nuts by ½-cup batches in an electric blender.