Series 7, Episode 7, Marjolaine
This one was a pretty intense bake, which is why it’s taken me 6 months to get round to doing it.
Here’s the recipe: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/marjolaine_71611
Since I knew this was a lot of work, I set aside most of the day and took my time over it. The first thing I made was a meringue with roasted nuts in:
This baked for about an hour and then I had to leave it in the oven to cool down. Leaving it in the oven was actually good for saving space, since there were so many other components to make. Here’s what it looked like when it came out of the oven:
Next was the ganache – this is standard recipe but I didn’t cut the chocolate down into small enough bits so I ended up microwaving it for a couple of seconds. It turned out fine though.
I then made praline which made caramel. I’m getting better at making caramel now and managed it first time. Here’s just after I poured the caramel onto the nuts and the sugar is still bubbling a little bit:
The buttercream was a weird recipe I’ve never heard of before, it used egg yolks, sugar syrup and butter, then the praline was stirred through.
I then had to assemble. I cut the 2 meringues into 2 lengthways and chose the most intact ones to go on the top and the bottom. The layers were: nutty meringue, praline buttercream, nutty meringue, chocolate ganache, nutty meringue, praline buttercream, nutty meringue and then it was covered all over in buttercream, coated in nuts (I threw the toasted almonds at the side messily), then the chocolate ganache was piped into diagonal lines and hazelnuts and pistachios alternating over the top. Here’s how it looked in the end:
It was huge and I had to cut it in half for it to fit into the container I was taking it out in. There was probably about 16 servings so great for a party with a lot of people (as long as they’re not allergic to nuts). I had mixed reactions – those who like nuts loved it, I was told it was my best ever bake and also had one request for it as a birthday cake.
Although I enjoyed it, I won’t be in a hurry to make it again… I think I preferred this similar dessert I made back when I was doing series 4 https://lilysparksbakeoffchallenge.co.uk/series-4/series-4-episode-8-hazelnut-dacquoise/ I’m better at making caramel now than I was then.
Lily
