White and Dark Chocolate Dacquoise

This is what my 11 year old daughter made for youth fair. So you could do this. What is a daquoise? it is a meringue cake (usually the meringue has nuts but this one doesn't) that usually frosted somewhat like a normal cake. This one has a white chocolate and dark chocolate buttercream that goes between the layers of meringue and then is topped by a ganache.

uh-huh. The buttercream is not the typical birthday cake buttercream that is just butter and powdered sugar, in fact the dark chocolate has a bit of the bitter taste of dark chocolate (enough so that my kids didn't like it without the meringue).

Anyway, it is wonderful! but it is also incredibly time consuming.

This is something to make for a big anniversary dinner, not a I-feel-like-having-chocolate Thursday.

The first step is to make a meringue. And here is the cast of characters that play in the meringue:

And yes, buy the 18 pack because you will only have 2 eggs left - and a freezer full of yolks. Unless you forget to add the granulated sugar and then you will be wishing you bought the 24 pack. Don't ask.

You preheat the oven to 250 and then sift together the cornstarch and powdered sugar and leave it in a nice neat pile. She whisked it together because that works just as well.

Place 8 egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment.

Whisk on high until stiff but not dry, about 1 ½ minutes. Gradually add granulated sugar while still whisking on high for an additional minute.

Remove bowl from mixer and fold in the dry, sifted ingredients. And it looks pretty much like it did before.

And then I forgot my job was taking pictures because there are not more of the next few steps so pretend.

Fill a piping bag without a tip with the meringue and decide what shape you want. If you want to make life easy on yourself, trace three 9-inch circles on parchment paper. If you want to complicate things, trace 2 rectangles that are 8x11 (do the circles, seriously). Turn the parchment pencil side down and you should still see the outline. Then with the tip cut off the piping bag (you could also use a gallon zip-top bag and cut off a corner), you trace the outline you made and then fill it in.

[Insert imaginary picture here]

We chose the rectangles because when finished, this cuts best very cold and so we had to precut into serving sizes so that it could be served at the contest. Making it for home, I would go with the circles.

[since you are imagining pictures you can also imagine that we made the circles too]

And then place into the oven and bake for 1 hour. After 1 hour, bump the heat down to 200 for 2 hours. And let it cool for at least 30 minutes.

Next comes the buttercream.

But that will be on another post.

Here is the recipe so far:

Meringue

¾ cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
8 egg whites
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F.

Draw three 9-inch circles (or two 8x11 rectangles) on a sheet of parchment paper with a pencil and lay face down on a cookie sheet large enough (or put on 2 cookie sheets). Set aside.

Sift together the confectioners’ sugar and corn starch. Set aside.

Place 8 egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Whisk on high until stiff but not dry, about 1 ½ minutes. Gradually add granulated sugar while still whisking on high for an additional minute. Remove bowl from mixer and fold in the dry, sifted ingredients.

Fill a pastry bag with no tip with meringue and trace around each drawn circles (rectangles) with a ½ inch thick piping of meringue, then fill in with remaining meringue. Place in preheated oven and bake for 1 hour. Lower oven temperature to 200 degrees and bake for an additional 2 hours. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on baking sheets for 30 minutes before handling.