Amy Atlas Wannabe

Last week my friend Jo got married. The wedding venue was a spectacular farm, complete with gorgeous barns, rolling hills, and a peaceful lake. Jo hired a super talented florist and one of the best local caterers in town. Heather (Sweet Heather Anne) and I were lucky enough to be asked to do an Amy Atlas-esque dessert table for the reception. Jo was such a laid back bride and gave everyone a lot of creative freedom to work within her vision. Her theme was a series of playful vignettes, packed with the charm and vintage worthy of a photo spread in Once Wed. Here's a peek at her penny candy table. See what I mean? Adorable!

And this is how the dessert table turned out. To pull the look together, Heather and I used various cake stands, jadeite platters, metal canisters, and a lovely floral tablecloth from Jo's collection of vintage treasures.

Heather made the cakes, three total and each a different flavor; I made the pastries; and together, we made 8 dozen painted sugar cookies!

The cake design was inspired by Jo's wedding attire, a striking teal mermaid gown with ruching from bodice to floor and a peacock feather hair piece.

The cake flavors were a ginger sour cream cake layered with apricot-ginger jam and topped with a vanilla buttercream, a caramel cake with praline crunch buttercream, and a rich chocolate cake with mexican-spiced chocolate ganache.

In addition to cake and cookies, beautifully rustic apple and raspberry pies made by Helen and Blake of EAT catering also had prominence on the table.

The pastries included chocolate dulce de leche bars, mexican wedding cookies, and brown butter spoon cookies sandwiched with either my homemade raspberry or apricot jams.

A small detail of which I'm most proud for the display is the signage. I was stumped by how to prop up the labels and disenchanted with the numerous cheesy place card holders available for purchase.

Then DIY inspiration hit. When looking through Jo's vintage tableware collection, I saw these: rusty mattress springs with alligator clips welded to the tips meant to be used to display the table numbers.

I made a miniature version by twisting 18-gauge copper wire into the necessary shape. Then, to eliminate the shiny, new-penny look, soaked the wires in a "tarnishing" solution borrowed from a jewelry-making friend to give the perfect brown/black patina.

Making this table (every step from concept to execution) was so much fun! A perfect use of my interests and talents. It would be a dream to quit my day job and instead do this full time. Watch out Amy Atlas, one day I may just get the courage to take the leap...

Pièce Montée, it's a showpiece and a lesson in vocabulary

Classic French centerpiece desserts, like the croquembouche, are usually reserved for important occasions, such as weddings or baptisms or communions. But when your favorite hip hop artist, who just happens to adore caramel, invites you to his birthday party, I can think of bringing nothing more appropriate.

The first time I made one of these, I learned that croquembouche meant "crunch in the mouth" since each individual pastry is drenched in hard caramel. This time around I have a new French vocab word to share: pièce montée. Used as a synonym for croquembouche, it translates as "mounted piece". Think pastry architecture, or rather, the deft assemblage of sugar and cream puffs into an impressive, sculpted form.

While a lofty tower of profiteroles is pretty amazing to look at, cutting into one to serve is another challenge entirely. The profiteroles are physically "glued" together with hard candy, making it tough work to gracefully disassemble. Last time, we attacked it rather clumsily with a serrated knife. I've read that others have taken a chisel and hammer to crack the hard surface. YIKES!

This time around, to facilitate sharing as an eat-out-of-hand casual party dessert, I decided to keep the caramel-dipped profiteroles separate (not touching) and flat on a single sheet tray. No sticking together (which, turns out, is pretty hard to unstick)...no montée...just pièce. The height would come, at least I was hoping with fingers crossed, from the fancy sugar work spun on top. I spent a few nights studying sugar techniques in this textbook as preparation, hoping to create something extraordinary.

But when the day came to make this, it rained. That brings me to another vocab word: hygroscopic. Sugar is hygroscopic meaning it will absorb water from the surrounding air. See those beads of liquid on the sugar strands in the photo up above?! It was dissolving faster than I could finish! I decided to cut the decoration short, and instead poured JD's initials with the remaining caramel and sprinkled the finished piece with crystallized lilacs. Not quite the pièce montée I envisioned, but I was told it was delicious all the same.

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a pièce montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri. Instead of the suggested recipes, I followed closely the instructions in Bo Friberg's The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef with great success. I was particularly proud that my profiteroles did not deflate.

Vanilla Crème Patissiere
yield: ~3 cups

2 cups (480 ml) whole milk
4 TBS (32 g) cornstarch
1½ cups (200 g) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
4 large egg yolks
4 TBS (60 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 TBS vanilla bean paste

Dissolve cornstarch in ¼ cup of milk. Combine the remaining milk with the sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil; remove from heat.

Beat the whole egg, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture. Pour ⅓ of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook.

Return the remaining milk to boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking.

Continue whisking (this is important – you do not want the eggs to solidify/cook) until the cream thickens and comes to a boil. Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla.

Pour cream into a bowl. Press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill immediately and until ready to use.

Pâte à Choux
yield: ~60 (1-inch) profiteroles

2 oz (57.5 g) cake flour
2¾ oz (77.5 g) bread flour
1 cup (240 ml) water
6 TBS (85g) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
¼ tsp (1.25g) salt
5 large eggs (1 cup), at room temperature

Sift the flours together on a sheet of parchment paper and reserve.

In a heavy-bottomed medium saucepan, bring the water, butter, and salt to a full rolling boil so that the butter droplets are dispersed throughout the liquid. Form the ends of the parchment into a funnel/cone shape; use this to pour the flour into the liquid while stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Add the flour as fast as it can be absorbed, but avoid adding it once, which may create lumps. Continue cooking, stirring vigorously until the mixture forms a smooth, dry mass and pulls away from the sides of the pan, about 2-3 minutes.

Transfer the dough into the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (you can also continue by hand). Let the dough cool while mixing on low for a couple of minutes so that the eggs do not scramble.

Once the dough has slightly cooled, begin to add the eggs one at a time. The dough will separate in the beginning, but it should come back together after the 3rd or 4th egg.

While the dough is still slightly warm, transfer it to a piping bag and pipe onto parchment lined baking sheets into shapes slightly larger than a cherry. Use a finger dipped in warm water to pat down any peaks.

Bake at 425° F until fully puffed and starting to show some color, about 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 375° F and bake about 10-12 minutes longer or until golden brown and dry. Turn off oven and leave door open with puffs remaining on the oven racks puffs. Allow them to cool completely to room temperature before removing. This should encourage steam to escape and prevent the puffs from deflating.

Once cool, make a small hole in the bottom of each profiterole. Using a pastry bag fitted with a No. 2 tip, fill each with the pastry cream.

Caramelized Sugar
yield: 2¼ cups

1 cup (240 ml) water
2 lbs (910 g) granulated sugar
¼ cup (60 ml) light corn syrup

Fill a bowl large enough to hold the pan used for cooking the sugar with enough cold water to reach halfway up the sides of the pan. Set this aside.

In a medium saucepan, combine 1 cup water and sugar and set over medium-high heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves and use a brush dipped in water to wash down any sugar crystals that stick to the side of the pan. Bring to a rolling boil, add the corn syrup, then lower the heat to medium. Do not stir once the sugar starts boiling. Instead, continue brushing down the sides of the pan with water as needed until the sugar reaches 280° F. Keep boiling until the syrup is amber in color. Quickly remove the pan from heat and dunk the bottom in the bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process.

Using 2 forks, dip the tops and sides of each cream-filled puff into the caramel, and arrange puffs as desired.

To make a spun-sugar web to decorate the croquembouche:
Cut the looped ends of a wire whisk with wire cutters, or use two forks held side by side, and dip the ends into caramel. Wave the caramel back and forth over the croquembouche, allowing the strands to fall in long, thin threads around it. Wrap any stray strands up and around the croquembouche.

Serve within 2 hours.

Orange Tian, Nostalgia

It may take a good long meandering to get where you're going, but there are some things in life that are fairly, intrinsically evident from the very beginning. Let me explain...

When I was a kid, growing up in Florida, our yard was pretty fantastically prolific with a lemon tree, 2 grapefruit trees (one pink and one white), 3 orange trees (of various types), 2 tangerine trees, and an avocado tree. Playing outside meant climbing the trees and picking the fruit to snack on at whim. When the little neighbor boys came over, my sister and I would set up "house" under the branches of a particular orange tree. Interestingly, now that I think back on our pretend roles, I was never the "wife" or the "mother" or the "child". Instead, I was the "cook". (That's me in the picture below.) And, oh boy, (with all that citrus at my little finger tips) did I come up with some creative "meals"! The thing I remember making the most, my specialty if you will, was tangerine pie.

The recipe was simple really: take one frisbee, fill with dirt, then level off the surface; next peel several tangerines, separating the segments and arrange each segment with care atop the dirt; serve immediately to hungry playmates. Every time I made it, I would arrange the tangerine pieces in a different pattern. I bet in one play session alone I must have consumed 4-5 tangerines on my own, clinging dirt included. Tangerines tasted so much better back then... Although, I'm doubting the extra "minerals" had anything to do with their incredibly sweet juiciness.

When this month's baking challenge popped on my horizon, I was instantly taken back to my days of tangerine pie making. We were challenged to make an orange tian. The dessert is made of different layers: a pâte sablée (a shortbread crust) with orange marmalade, a flavored whipped cream topped with fresh orange segments, and served with a caramel and orange sauce.

You build the dessert upside down and then unmold it so that the bottom layer (the orange segments) becomes the top layer. Admittedly, the tian is much fancier of an approach than my frisbee method, but the fanned-out orange segments look so amusingly similar. As a tribute to my childhood, I substituted a chocolate pâte sablée crust to approximate the dirt layer, and I posed the finished tian in a frisbee I borrowed from a friend. Doesn't quite taste the same as I remember when I was a kid, but that's alright by me. This "new" method has a grown-up appeal all its own.

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.

ORANGE TIAN RECIPE

Chocolate Pâte Sablée

2 medium-sized egg yolks at room temperature
6 TBS + 1 tsp granulated sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
7 TBS unsalted butter, cubed and frozen
⅓ teaspoon salt
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup + 2 TBS cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder

Put the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, ice cold cubed butter and salt in a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Pulse briefly to combine.
In a separate bowl, add the eggs yolks, vanilla extract and sugar and beat with a whisk until the mixture is pale. Pour the egg mixture in the food processor.
Process until the dough just comes together. If you find that the dough is still a little too crumbly to come together, add a couple drops of water and process again to form a homogenous ball of dough. Form into a disc, cover with plastic wrap and leave to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 350° F. Roll out the dough onto a lightly floured surface until you obtain a ¼-inch thick circle. Using your cookie cutter, cut out circles of dough and place on a parchment (or silicone) lined baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes.

Citrus Melange Marmalade
makes 1½ pints

Juice and flesh from 2 oranges

10 thinly sliced kumquats (discard ends)

Juice and flesh from 1 large grapefruit

Juice and flesh from 2 Meyer lemons

2¾ cups sugar

½ cup water

Remove rind from all fruit with a vegetable peeler. (Set aside small piece of rind from all fruits to add in later)
 Remove all of the white pith from the fruit. If left on this will make your marmalade very bitter! 
Very thinly slice reserved rind into matchsticks.
 Supreme the oranges, gratefruit and lemons and add all ingredients including juice to a non-reactive saucepan.
 Bring to a boil and simmer until mixture begins to thicken about 45 minutes.
 Once mixture has become thick and reduced, registering 221° F on a candy thermometer, transfer to jars and process in a hot water bath canner.

Orange Segments

Supreme about 8 oranges into segments over a shallow bowl, collecting the juice as you slice. Add the segments to the bowl with the juice. For a variegated effect, I used both cara cara (a pinkish, navel orange) and regular navel oranges.

Orange Caramel Sauce

1 cup granulated sugar
1½ cups + 2 TBS fresh-squeezed orange juice

Place the sugar in a wide pan on medium heat and begin to heat it. The sugar will start to melt and turn a caramel color. Holding the handle of the pan, gently swirl the pan occasionally to evenly distribute the heat. Do not stir with a utensil. The sugar will begin to turn a caramel color and smell like cotton candy.

Once the sugar starts to bubble and foam, slowly add the orange juice. As soon as the mixture starts boiling, remove from the heat and pour half of the mixture over the orange segments.

Reserve the other half of the caramel mixture in a small bowl — you will use this later to spoon over the finished dessert. When the dessert is assembled and setting in the freezer, heat the kept caramel sauce in a small saucepan over low heat until it thickens and just coats the back of a spoon (~10 minutes). You can then spoon it over the orange tians.

Stabilized Whipped Cream

3 TBS hot water
1 tsp gelatine
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 TBS confectioner's sugar
1 TBS marmalade (see recipe above)

In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatine over the surface of the hot water, wait one minute and then stir well until the gelatine dissolves. Let the gelatine cool to room temperature while you make the whipped cream. Combine the cream in a chilled mixing bowl. Whip the cream using a hand mixer on low speed until the cream starts to thicken for about one minute. Add the confectioner sugar. Increase the speed to medium-high. Whip the cream until the beaters leave visible (but not lasting) trails in the cream, then add the cooled gelatine slowly while beating continuously. Continue whipping until the cream is light and fluffy and forms soft peaks. Transfer the whipped cream to a bowl and fold in the orange marmalade.

Putting it all together:

Make sure you have some room in your freezer. Ideally, you should be able to fit a small baking sheet or tray of desserts to set in the freezer.

Lay out tian molds (i.e., cookie cutters set on a removable base like parchment or small springform pans) on a baking tray.

Drain the orange segments on a kitchen towel.

Have the marmalade, whipped cream and baked circles of chocolate pâte sablée ready to use.

Arrange the orange segments at the bottom of each ring mold. Make sure the segments all touch each other and that there are no gaps arranging them in a fanned out pattern. Make sure they fit snuggly and look pretty as they will end up being the top of the dessert.

Once you have neatly arranged one layer of orange segments at the bottom of each mold, add a couple spoonfuls of whipped cream and gently spread it so that it covers the orange segments entirely in an even layer. Leave about ¼-inch at the top so there is room for the pâte sablée cookies.

Using a butter knife or small spoon, spread a small even layer of orange marmalade on each cookie.

Carefully place the cookie over each ring (the side of dough covered in marmalade should be the side touching the whipping cream). Gently press on the cookie to make sure the dessert is compact.

Place the desserts to set in the freezer to set for 10 minutes.

To unmold, use a small knife to gently go around the edges of the cookie cutter to make sure the dessert will be easy to release. Gently place your serving plate on top of each tian mold and turn the plate over. Slowly remove the ring, add a spoonful of caramel sauce and serve immediately.

Birthday Croquembouche: collaboration among friends

Last weekend I made my first Croquembouche in collaboration with my friends Elizabeth and Shana. Over the holidays, I had seen numerous pictures of towers of profiteroles adorned with spun sugar. Beautiful. Decadent. Time consuming. I had it in mind to make one--some day--but gosh that looks like a lot of work, and who would eat it? Not true, if you divide tasks among friends and make it the centerpiece of a 30th birthday party. Shane, Elizabeth's fiancé, took the amazing photos I'm posting here. More from the day can be found on his Flickr page.

The first step was to make the Pâte à Choux, the dough for the pastries.

This dough was piped onto parchment in small spirals,

and baked in the oven until golden and puffed. Meanwhile, a vanilla pastry cream was made. Unfortunately, no photos were taken to document the process.

The profiteroles were slit (slightly) with a knife, and once cool, pastry cream was piped into each.

Having an extra pair of hands made things go smoother.

As the cream puffs were being filled...

a caramel sauce was made.

The caramel was ready for dipping when it reached a golden amber color.

Quickly (being careful not to burn fingers) the cream puffs were dipped in hot caramel,

and layered to form a pyramid.

As the caramel cooled, it formed a crisp sugar coating over each cream puff. This is where the croquembouche gets its name, as it translates: "crunch in the mouth".

The caramel also serves as a natural adhesive, holding the pastries in place.

Once the tower was formed, a modified whisk (with ends snipped straight) was dipped into the remaining caramel and withdrawn slowly and vertically to create delicate wisps of sugar. The modified whisk was a kind gift from my dental hygienist, Cindy. She gave me plenty of useful tips on how to spin the sugar.

To transfer the sugar strands, they were gathered and pinched at the base with one hand and spun around the croquembouche with the other hand holding the whisk. Placing the cake plate on a turntable helped keep the distribution more even. Working quickly was key too. The sugar hardens into shape as it cools.

Here is the finished piece.

A view from the top reveals a degree of order to the messy, haystack appearance of the spun sugar.

Sparklers were a perfect match for this birthday treat. No other candle could quite do justice to this masterpiece.

RECIPES:

Pâte à Choux
makes 35-40 profiteroles
adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé

½ cup whole milk
½ cup water
1 stick unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
¼ tsp sugar
¼ tsp salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
5 large eggs, at room temperature

In a heavy-bottomed medium saucepan, bring the milk, water, butter, sugar and salt to a boil. Once the mixture is at a rolling boil, add all the flour in at once, reduce the heat to medium and start to stir the mixture vigorously with a wooden spoon. The dough will come together quickly. Continue stirring until the dough is smooth, dry and has come away from the pan (2-3 minutes).

Transfer the dough into the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (you can also continue by hand). Let the dough cool while mixing on low for a couple of minutes so that the eggs do not scramble.

Once the dough has slightly cooled, begin to add the eggs one at a time. The dough will separate in the beginning, but it should come back together after the 3rd or 4th egg.

While the dough is still slightly warm, scoop it into a piping bag to beginning piping the éclairs or profiteroles.

Pipe choux dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake at 375 degrees F for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown and dry. With a serrated knife gently slice open each profiterole to allow steam to escape. Cool completely.

NOTE:
Once the dough is made you need to shape it immediately.
You can pipe the dough and freeze it. Simply pipe the dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets, and freeze. Once the dough is completely frozen, transfer the piped shapes into a freezer bag and store for up to 1 month.

FOR PASTRY CREAM
makes 2½ cups

2 cups whole milk
4 large egg yolks
6 TBS sugar
3 TBS cornstarch, sifted
2½ TBS unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ of a vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped

In a small saucepan, bring the milk and vanilla bean seeds to a boil.

In the meantime, combine the yolks, sugar and cornstarch together and whisk in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.

Once the milk has reached a boil, temper the yolks by whisking a couple spoonfuls of the hot milk into the yolk mixture. Continue whisking and slowly pour the rest of the milk into the tempered yolk mixture.

Strain the mixture back into the saucepan to remove any egg that may have scrambled. Place the pan over medium heat and whisk vigorously until the mixture returns to a boil. Continue whisking for 1 to 2 more minutes (still over medium heat).

Scrape the pastry cream into a small bowl and set in an ice bath to stop the cooking process. Make sure to continue stirring occasionally so that you end up with a smooth cream.

Once the cream has slightly cooled, slowly begin to add the butter in three or four installments.

Transfer directly to pastry bag fitted with desired tip and chill in the fridge at least 2 hours or up to 2 days.

When ready to fill profiteroles pipe pastry cream into the slit edge of each pastry.

FOR CARAMEL
2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons corn syrup

In a medium saucepan, combine 2/3 cup water, sugar, and corn syrup, and bring to a boil over high heat. Do not stir. Cover pan, and boil until steam dissolves any crystals. Uncover, and boil 5 more minutes, or until syrup is amber in color. Remove from heat. Dip the bottom of each cream-filled puff into the caramel, and arrange puffs in a pyramid.

To make a spun-sugar web to wrap around the croquembouche:

Cut the looped ends of a wire whisk with wire cutters, or use two forks held side by side, and dip the ends into caramel. Wave the caramel back and forth over the croquembouche, allowing the strands to fall in long, thin threads around it. Wrap any stray strands up and around the croquembouche. Serve within 2 hours.

Dobos Torta

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

So, what is the Dobos Torta?

The word 'dobos' means 'like a drum' in Hungarian. However, this cake is named after its creator. This rich torte is made by stacking 7-9 extra-thin layers of GÉNOISE (or sponge cake) spread with chocolate buttercream. The top is covered with a hard caramel glaze. A classic Viennese layer cake.

One of the great "fad" desserts of the 19th century, the Dobos torta or torte (sometimes Anglicized as "Dobosh") was invented by the famous Hungarian confectioner Jozsef C. Dobos in 1884. Dobos owned a well-renowned shop in Budapest that specialized in gourmet foods at a time when shipping food over distance was usually unreliable. His shop routinely featured as many as sixty imported cheeses, as well as foreign wines, breads, and occasionally cakes. His high profile often took him to international food exhibitions, so that he became, for his time, what we would think of as the equivalent of a superstar TV chef/food impresario. The fame of the torte to which Dobos gave his name was probably at least partly due to its extravagant use of chocolate buttercream, at a time when most cakes were iced or filled with cooked creams, whipped creams, or custards.

Dobos had brought the buttercream recipe back with him from one of his many exploratory journeys -- in this case, a trip to France -- and shortly thereafter introduced the cake at the National General Exhibition of Budapest in 1885, as well as featuring it in his shop. Due to all this publicity (for it became a favorite of the Emperor and Empress of Austro-Hungary), people in cities across Europe began clamoring for it, but Dobos refused to license out the recipe. Instead. Dobos developed a special container in which it could be safely shipped, and "the cake with the secret recipe" soon started appearing in all the great European capitals. In fact, Dobos actually toured with the cake, personally introducing it in city after city, until the early 1900's, when he retired. He then gave the recipe to the Budapest Confectioners' and Gingerbread Makers' Chamber of Industry, on the condition that all members should be able to use the recipe freely.

So here it freely is for you to try too...

Sponge cake layers
6 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1 ⅓ cups confectioner's sugar, divided
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sifted cake flour
pinch of salt

Chocolate Buttercream

I added hazelnut paste to the buttercream to really amp up the flavor, for this cake became a birthday treat for a friend that adores hazelnuts.

4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup superfine sugar
4oz dark chocolate, finely chopped
⅓ cup hazelnut paste
2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons (250g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

Caramel topping

1 cup superfine sugar
12 tablespoons water
8 teaspoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon grapeseed oil

Finishing touches

7” cardboard round
12 whole hazelnuts, peeled and toasted
½ cup peeled and finely chopped hazelnuts

Directions for the sponge layers:

1. Position the racks in the top and center thirds of the oven and heat to 400F.

2. Cut six pieces of parchment paper to fit the baking sheets. Using the bottom of a 9" cake pan as a template and a pen, trace a circle on each of the papers, and turn them over so that the ink doesn't touch the cake batter.
3. Beat the egg yolks, ⅔ cup of the confectioner's sugar, and the vanilla in a medium bowl with a mixer on high speed until the mixture is thick, pale yellow and forms a thick ribbon when the beaters are lifted a few inches above the batter, about 3 minutes.
4. In another bowl, using clean beaters, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the remaining ⅔ cup of confectioner's sugar until the whites form stiff, shiny peaks. Using a large rubber spatula, stir about ¼ of the beaten whites into the egg yolk mixture, then fold in the remainder, leaving a few wisps of white visible. Combine the flour and salt. Sift half the flour over the eggs, and fold in;

repeat with the remaining flour.
5. Line one of the baking sheets with a circle-marked paper.
Using a small offset spatula, spread about ¾ cup of the batter in an even layer, filling in the traced circle on one baking sheet. Bake on the top rack for 5 minutes, until the cake springs back when pressed gently in the center and the edges are lightly browned. While this cake bakes, repeat the process on the other baking

sheets. When the first cake is done, move the second cake to the top rack. Invert the first cake onto a flat surface and carefully peel off the paper. Slide the cake layer back onto the paper and let stand until cool. Rinse the baking sheet under cold running water to cool, and dry it before lining with another parchment. Continue with the remaining papers and batter to make a total of six (or possibly more) layers. Completely cool the layers. Using an 8" cake pan as a template, trim each cake layer into a neat round.

Directions for the chocolate hazelnut buttercream:

1. Prepare a double-boiler: quarter-fill a large saucepan with water and bring it to a boil.
2. Meanwhile, whisk the eggs with the sugar until pale and thickened, about 5 minutes.
3. Fit bowl over the boiling water in the saucepan (water should not touch bowl) and lower the heat to a brisk simmer. Cook the egg mixture, whisking constantly, for 2-3 minutes until you see it starting to thicken a bit. Whisk in the finely chopped chocolate and cook, stirring, for a further 2-3 minutes.
4. Scrape the chocolate mixture into a medium bowl and leave to cool to room temperature. It should be quite thick and sticky in consistency.
5. When cool, beat in the soft butter, a small piece (about 2 tablespoons) at a time. An electric hand mixer is great here, but it is possible to beat the butter in with a spatula if it is soft enough. Add hazelnut spread and continue to beat. You should end up with a thick, velvety chocolate buttercream. Chill while you make the caramel topping.

Directions for the caramel topping:

1. Choose the best-looking cake layer for the caramel top. To make the caramel topping: Line a 8-9” silicone cake pan with parchment paper and butter the paper. Cut the reserved cake layer into 12 equal wedges. Reform into a circle and place on the paper. Lightly oil a thin, sharp knife and an offset metal spatula.
2. Stir the sugar, water and lemon juice in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over a medium heat, stirring often to dissolve the sugar. Once dissolved into a smooth syrup, turn the heat up to high and boil without stirring, swirling the pan by the handle occasionally and washing down any sugar crystals on the sides of the pan with a wet brush until the syrup has turned into an amber-coloured caramel. This could take some time, be vigilantly patient.
3. Immediately pour all of the hot caramel over the cake layer. Using the offset spatula, quickly spread the caramel evenly to the edge of the cake layer. Let cool until set, about a minute or so. Using a sharp, hot oiled knife (keep re-oiling this with a pastry brush between cutting), cut and separate the wedges using one firm slice movement (rather than rocking back and forth which may produce toffee strands). Cool completely.

Assembling the Dobos

1. Place a dab of chocolate buttercream on the middle of a 7 1/2” cardboard round and top with one cake layer. Spread the layer with one part of the chocolate icing. Repeat with additional cake layers. Spread the remaining icing on the sides of the cake.
2. Press the finely chopped hazelnuts onto the sides of the cake.
3. Propping a hazelnut under each wedge so that it sits at an angle, arrange the wedges on top of the cake in a spoke pattern. If you have any leftover buttercream, you can pipe rosettes under each hazelnut or a large rosette in the centre of the cake. Refrigerate the cake under a cake dome until the icing is set, about 2 hours. Let slices come to room temperature for the best possible flavor.