Dacquoise

Do you ever wish you had a giant macaron the size of a cake? Yeah, me too. So, that’s pretty much what this is. A giant macaron that’s coffee hazelnut flavored and fucking delicious. As of right now, it’s still my favorite, and I’m writing this in November (after my 22nd challenge). I will say you need to start this THE DAY BEFORE you actually are going to make it. You need to let the “cake layers”? Merengue layers? Rest in the oven overnight.

Here’s the recipe I used: https://www.butterbaking.com/2015/10/21/coffee-and-hazelnut-dacquoise/

For the dacquoise AKA cake layers:

70 g hazelnut meal (flour) *I didn’t use this much because it’s hella expensive and I wasn’t going to buy two bags, so I just did 50 g and did more of the almond meal.

80 g almond meal

185 g powdered sugar, sifted *you DO want to sift; again, with like a regular cake, I don’t do that, but for this, you should.

A pinch of sea salt

6 egg whites

½ c granulated sugar *can we talk about how this recipe has half metric measurements and half American measurements?

Making it:

1. Preheat oven to 225 F.

2. Line two or three sheet trays with parchment paper. Use an 8-inch round cake tin as a stencil to draw 3 8-inch circles on the parchment paper. Flip the paper over and grease the paper. *I used two sheet trays because who has three? It was tight, but I made it work. You could also turn a 13 x 9 pan upside down and use that as an additional tray. I've done it.

3. In a medium bowl, combine hazelnut meal, almond meal, powdered sugar, and salt together.

4. In a stand mixer with whisk attachment, beat egg whites until they reach soft peaks. *the peaks will fall back on themselves a bit.

5. While still mixing, add the granulated sugar slowly and beat until you get stiff peaks. *where they stand up freely like an independent woman!

6. Gently fold the dry mixture into the egg mixture. The mixture will look goopy. *Kind of like macaron mixture because that’s basically what it is. If you haven’t tried out the macaron recipe I did, you totally should! It's the first post on this blog :) 

7. Fill a piping bag with a round nozzle.

8. Using the stencil, pipe the three circles with meringue and fill them in. *I didn’t quite know how they wanted me to fill them in, so I just kept on swirling all the way in like a lollipop. I also had a bit extra, so I made little macarons in case I wanted to decorate with them- which I did!

9. Bake the dacquoise for 3 hours. Turn off the oven and leave them in the CLOSED oven to dry for at least 6 hours or overnight. *I put a post-it on my oven because my husband likes to unintentionally sabotage.   

For the coffee buttercream:

110 g milk

1 tsp vanilla bean paste *I didn’t have this, so I just used vanilla extract

70 g granulated sugar

10 g cornstarch

2 egg yolks

220 g unsalted butter, softened and cubed *how do you cube something that is soft????

3 tbsp instant coffee

Pinch of sea salt

Making it:

1. Bring the milk and vanilla to a simmer in a medium pot. *Again, if you’re using vanilla extract, wait til it’s off the heat to add.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together sugar, cornstarch, and egg yolks.

3. Pour the milk in a steady stream into the egg mixture, stirring constantly. *Be gentle at first- you don’t want the eggs to get all pissed and scramble on you, so do like you’re getting into a hot tub. Put one toe in at a time.

4. Transfer the mixture back to the pot. Continue mixing until the mixture goes back to a boil and cooks for one minute.

5. Pour the custard back in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap directly touching the surface. 

6. Refrigerate until cool.

7. Once cool, place in a stand mixer and whisk until creamy.

8. Add the butter, one cube at a time, whipping on medium speed until completely incorporated between each addition.

9. Once the butter has been added, add the salt and coffee and whip until combined. 

Assembly:

1. Gently peel the meringue from the parchment paper.

2. Place one meringue on a serving tray. *I always put a dab of buttercream under it to help it stay.  

3. Spread 1/3 of the buttercream onto the first layer. *I had to be stingy with my buttercream and still almost ran out. The original recipe shows these cute additional dots of buttercream around the top and bottom for decoration. I literally can't imagine how they had that much buttercream left over. Maybe double the recipe for the buttercream. No one will be mad at that. You don't NEED it, but it would make decorating easier. 

4. Continue stacking, and then cover the whole thing with the buttercream. *I decorated with some of the baby macarons (and crumbled some around the edges also). 

Rating (Scale 1 - 5):
Difficulty: 3
Amount of Time: 3 (but not all active time)
Awesomeness: 5