aggiespartan said:
They had to do this on an episode of the Great British Bake Off. I would recommend finding that segment and watching it. You may also be able to find a masterclass for it. It's a lot of steps, so make sure you allow yourself enough time to get it completed.
The description on this
recipe from the Telegraph:
Quote:
Bronte Aurell from Scandi Kitchen shares a recipe for Swedish princess cake, the fiendishly difficult technical challenge on The Great British Bake Off
This site has better stills of the assembly than most.
The cake itself is a genoise, which gets it's lift from air incorporated into eggs. No leavening. I'm curious about aggiespartan's experience and tips for working with genoise. The classic method is to gently heat the eggs and sugar while beating, before incorporating the melted butter. The BBC recipe doesn't heat at all; others use a kind of really gentle double boiler setup. I've only done it twice. In both cases it was a chocolate genoise and I used my sous vide circulator to create a controlled temp water path to beat the eggs and sugar in a steel bowl using a stick blender whisk attachment (I don't have a hand mixer). The first time it worked great. The second time I was too impatient in how fast I added the melted butter and wound up collapsing some of the egg foam to get a sponge that was kind of like a running shoe: A nice soft top over a thin very rubbery bottom layer about .25 inches thick.
I wonder how much of the princess cake can be made ahead... can you make the sponge early enough to redo it in case of a disaster like my second one?