July Daring Bakers: Filbert Gateau!

The obvious first comment that will undoubtedly jump to your mind when you correlate the title with the date will be "but Maria, it's not July". And, dear reader, you are correct. The post date for the July Daring Baker's Challenge was July 31st, alas my computer was deathly ill and in a computer ICU for the last few weeks. It's a family computer, which means that there is far too much downloading, and browsing, and cookie-accumulating for the poor old beast. And every once in a while it just catches a bug and needs a vacation.

But I'm back! And finally with some pictures and stories to tell about this great challenge. This month's challenge was a Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream from Carole Walter's "Great Cakes". It was hosted by Chris of Mele Cote who obviously is a sucker for punishment. Not that this wasn't an enjoyable challenge - it was amazing, such an accomplishment, and delicious. But it took me SIX HOURS to finish this challenge from start to finish, and peeling hazelnuts was ridiculous.

It had a lot of expensive ingrediants (namely the hazelnuts and the booze) - but it made a very large, rich cake that could have been cut quite thin and still been exceptionally satisfying for every person.

It turns out that to bake with hazelnuts, you have to peel them first. Otherwise, their skins have a very bitter taste (like the bitter taste you get off a walnut). In order to peel them you can roast them for a few minutes, but I found that wasn't enough, so I actually boiled mine for a few minutes to get the skins off. Even after that, they didn't just "rub off" as promised and I found myself logging a lot of hours peeling individual skins off a few hundred hazelnuts. It really made me appreciate how much work making a cake like this is, and why they are so damn expensive. Over and above the ingredients, the manpower in this thing was unreal!

The recipe is here if you are feeling very adventurous, but let me tell you, it is worth the effort.

The cool thing about this cake is its lack of rising agent. It was done all with eggs, which meant that we had to move quickly and gently in order to combine all of the parts, get it into the pan, and then into the oven. I was really impressed with how light and fluffy the batter was. When I poured it into the pan there were bubble throughout the mix, but tapping it a few times on the side with a spoon helped remove them. You have to be careful, though, because although you don't want air trapped inside, you still need it to be very light - so you can't overmix!

For my apricot glaze I actually chose a brand of Smucker's Jam that was an apricot, peach and passionfruit ("triple fruit") combination. It was unbelievable. The jam was also reduced sugar, which was nice because every component of this recipe was very rich, and it added a slightly less sweet element to the cake. The jam was definitely not tart, but it wasn't as sickly sweet as most jams are. It was spread all over the cake (which at this point had been divided into three layers and spread throughout with praline buttercream) just before glazing the sucker with chocolate ganache.

When the cake was finished I tried piping the little leaves on the top of the cake that the original recipe called for, but my praline buttercream was not as smooth as I had hoped. No matter how much I ground up the hazlenut brittle I had made (yes, you even make hazelnut brittle!) I couldn't get it into a paste - just into a really wet meal. While that was OK, and added some texture to the buttercream, in the end it proved too hard to squeeze through a leaf tip and so I just added it in "blobs" with raspberries on the top of the cake. Gimme a break - I was now leaning into hour six, and only slightly exhausted.

The final product, though, was unreal. The cake was moist and so delicious. I used both Grand Marnier and Dark Rum in the recipe (as called for), and it added such a good kick to the whole recipe. While I can't see me whipping this up all that often, it was an excellent Daring Baker's challenge, and a great cake to learn how to make. It was also comforting that, although even this one wasn't perfect, it was not nearly as disastrous as last month and re-instilled some confidence and daring in me!

So better later than never let me present: Maria's Miraculous Filbert Gateau!