This recipe from King Arthur Flour is by far the most interesting cake recipe I’ve ever made.
This is a layered sponge cake with meringue baked on top of the sponge. Baked on top of the meringue is shaved almonds dusted with cinnamon sugar. Between the layers is a rich pastry cream and whatever berries you have on hand – I used blueberries and strawberries.
What I love about this cake is the crispy yet chewy meringue and the super tasty sugared almond flavour. It is amazing.
The cakes didn’t turn out perfectly, but it is likely due to me modifying the sizes.
To maintain a baking hobby like mine, you cannot keep and eat all of the baking, so instead of big cakes, I often try to divide the batter into several small cakes so that I can give some away. For this, I made two 4″ cakes and a half of an 8″ cake. Half a cake? Limited number of pans.
I took the small cakes out earlier than the recipe said, and they were fine, but I left the 8″ in for the full time and it was over baked, leaving it a bit hard and dry.
Next time I will definitely cook it for lest time.
Also, the small cakes did not deflate nearly as much as the large one did, so putting filling between the layers didn’t really work.
While they look quite majestic, they are absurdly tall and impossible to eat. I did discover that the meringue on the large cake came away from the sponge quite easily, so I think next time I will try to make the small cakes and put the filling between the meringue and the sponge and make that an individual cake.
The Shrinking Head 