Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2

by Julia Child

  2) Baking—oven has been preheated to 350 degrees

  Bake for about an hour. Cake is done when it has risen almost to rim of pan; the top will crack, and a cake tester or skewer plunged down through a crack in the center will come out dry, with a few crumbs but no liquid adhering. Let cake cool for 20 minutes. To unmold, run a thin flexible knife around cake; turn a serving plate upside down over pan, reverse the two, and give a sharp downward jerk to unmold cake onto plate.

  (*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: If you are not serving or icing immediately, let cake cool; wipe out cake pan and reverse over cake, then slip it into a plastic bag and refrigerate. Cake will keep 3 or 4 days, or may be frozen for a month or more.

  To serve as a dessert

  Slice into 2 or 3 layers, fill and ice with crème Chantilly (lightly beaten and sweetened cream), or the Chantilly meringuée, and pass chocolate sauce separately.

  To serve as a cake

  Slice into 2 or 3 layers, and follow any of the suggestions in the list of frostings and fillings, such as butter-cream filling with chocolate icing.

  LE GLORIEUX

  [A Very Rich, Very Light Chocolate Cake]

  This dark and delicious cousin of the Quatre Quarts is made with cornstarch instead of flour, but again the secret of a full, light cake lies in how rapidly and delicately you fold the starch and finally the chocolate and butter into the egg mixture. Here we have suggested a two-layer cake: the batter is divided and cooked in two pans; one still-warm cake goes upon the other with chocolate filling in between. You may frost the cake with more chocolate, with white meringue icing, or, if it is a dessert, with whipped cream.

  For two 4-cup pans or one 8-cup pan, serving 12 to 16

  1) Preliminaries

  7 ounces semisweet baking chocolate

  2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate

  ¼ cup orange liqueur

  The grated rind of 1 orange

  2 four-cup cake pans (such as round ones 8 by 1½ inches), bottom lined with waxed paper, pans buttered and floured

  2 sticks butter

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place rack in middle level. Break up chocolate and melt with orange liqueur and orange rind over hot water (see directions); it must be perfectly smooth and creamy. Cut the butter into ¼-inch slices and beat piece by piece into the chocolate, again making sure mixture is perfectly smooth and creamy. (A hand-held electric mixer is useful here.) If consistency is too liquid—it should be like a heavy mayonnaise—beat over iced water. Set aside.

  2) The cake batter

  5 “large” eggs

  1 cup sugar

  1 tsp vanilla extract

  An electric mixer and 3- to 4-quart bowl (be sure mixer blades and bowl are clean and dry)

  Beat the eggs and sugar for a moment at low speed to blend, then increase speed to high, add vanilla, and beat several minutes (7 to 8 with a hand-held machine) until mixture is pale, fluffy, doubled in volume, and holds in soft peaks.

  1 cup (4 ounces) cornstarch measured by scooping dry-measure cup into starch and leveling off

  A sieve or sifter set over waxed paper

  The chocolate-butter mixture

  A rubber spatula

  Just as you are ready to blend the various batter elements together, sift the cornstarch onto the paper, check on the chocolate-butter to be sure it is a smooth, thick cream, and give the eggs and sugar a few turns of the beater if they have lost their body.

  At slow mixing speed, gradually sprinkle the cornstarch into the egg mixture, taking 15 to 20 seconds to incorporate it but not trying for a perfect blend; you must not deflate the beaten eggs. Remove bowl from stand, if you have that kind of mixer. Fold a large gob of egg mixture into chocolate-butter to lighten it. Then, a large gob at a time, start folding chocolate-butter into eggs, rapidly cutting down through batter and out to side with rubber spatula, rotating bowl, and repeating movement 2 or 3 times. When almost incorporated, add another gob, and continue until all is used. Immediately turn the batter into the prepared pans. Rapidly push batter up sides of pans all around, and bang lightly on table to deflate possible bubbles. Pans should be about ⅔ filled. Place at once in middle level of preheated oven, leaving at least 2 inches of space between pans as well as walls and door of oven.

  3) Baking, filling, and frosting

  Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Cakes should remain slightly moist, in the French manner, and are done when a skewer or toothpick plunged into center comes out looking oily, with a few speckles of chocolate clinging to it. Cake will usually rise ¼ to ½ inch above rim of pans. Cool for 10 minutes. Top of cakes will crack and flake slightly, which is normal. Make the following filling while cakes are cooling.

  the chocolate filling:

  3 ounces semisweet baking chocolate

  ½ ounce unsweetened baking chocolate

  3 Tb orange liqueur

  4 to 5 Tb unsalted butter, cut into ¼-inch slices

  Melt the chocolate in the liqueur over hot water. When perfectly smooth and creamy, beat in the butter piece by piece. If mixture is too soft for easy spreading, beat over iced water until the consistency of mayonnaise.

  filling the cake:

  A cake rack

  A cookie sheet

  When cakes have cooled for 10 minutes, run a knife around edge of one to loosen it from the pan and unmold onto cake rack. Peel off waxed paper.

  Spread top with filling. Immediately unmold second cake onto one end of cookie sheet. Line up cake on sheet exactly with cake on rack, then slide the one upon the other. Peel paper off top of second cake. If sides are uneven, trim with a knife.

  (*) AHEAD-OF-TIME NOTE: If not to be iced or served immediately, cover airtight as soon as cake is cool or it will dry out. Cake may be frozen at this point; thaw for several hours at room temperature.

  4) Frosting and serving

  WHIPPED CREAM. To serve the cake as a dessert or with tea, spread lightly whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with vanilla or orange liqueur, around and over the cake (crème Chantilly, or the Chantilly meringuée). Decorate with shaved or grated chocolate.

  MERINGUE ICING. Or use the plain Italian meringue (hot sugar syrup whipped into stiffly beaten egg whites), or the meringue butter cream.

  CHOCOLATE ICING. Or while the cake is still warm, spread on the same chocolate and butter mixture that you used for the filling, or use one of the chocolate butter creams listed in Volume I, pages 680–4.

  LE SUCCÈS—LE PROGRÈS, LA DACQUOISE

  [Meringue-nut Layer Cake with Butter-cream Frosting and Filling]

  This particularly delicious type of French cake rarely appears among American recipes, yet it is far easier to make than a layer cake, and infinitely more elegant. Light yet rich, every mouthful is a poem. This is the kind of pastry you will see in the very best French pastry shops, and it is one that you can duplicate or even improve upon because you need not skimp on ingredients or quality.

  To describe the cake, it is layers of baked meringue mounted one upon the other, like a regular layer cake, with filling in between. The meringue layers, fonds à Succès, are composed of egg whites and sugar beaten in a machine like any meringue, but when it forms stiff peaks ground almonds are folded in. The meringue is then spread out in disk shapes, heart shapes like our illustrations, or whatever other shapes you wish, and baked, like all meringues, in a very slow oven. The taste and texture of this mixture is, of course, far more interesting than plain meringue and just as easy to make.

  HISTORICAL AND PHILOLOGICAL NOTES

  While the cooked disks of meringue are called fonds, meaning foundations or layers, and fonds à Succès when the cake is titled Le Succès, you will see the terms fonds à Progrès, fonds parisiens, Dacquoise, broyage suisse, and gâteau japonais in French recipe books and elsewhere. Some authorities consider the Succès as containing almonds, and the Progrès almonds and filberts (noisettes, hazelnuts), while the Dacquoise is either formula plus starch and butter; other recipes make no distinctions. Broyage
obviously comes from broyer, to grind, and refers to the ground nuts in the meringue; gâteau japonais appears to be British for meringue-nut layer cake.

  There are various opinions, also, on what should fill and what should frost a Succès versus a Progrès or a Dacquoise. Since no one agrees on anything, you are quite safe in doing whatever you wish. In addition to the frosting and filling in the following recipe, other suggestions are at the end of it.

  MANUFACTURING NOTE

  An electric mixer, even the small hand-held type, makes both the meringue and the butter cream fast and simple to do. Form the meringue disks with a spatula if you have no large canvas pastry bag, but the bag usually makes neater shapes. No-stick baking sheets are especially recommended for meringues, or no-stick baking paper. If your baking sheets are not large enough to hold three 8-inch disks, make 4 smaller disks and a 4- rather than a 3-layer cake. (A discussion of beating egg whites is in the appendix, and illustrated directions for beating and folding egg whites are in Volume I, pages 159–61.) You will need toasted almonds and almond pralin (caramelized almonds), and do read the recipe through before you plan to make the cake so there will be no surprise ingredients or timings.

  A NOTE ON NUTS—FILBERTS

  You may use either ground blanched almonds or half and half ground almonds and ground filberts (hazelnuts, noisettes) in the following recipe. Filberts are not as easily available here as in France, and the ready-shelled packaged nuts turn rancid rapidly; shelled or ground filberts should be stored in the freezer, as should ground almonds.

  To prepare shelled filberts for cooking, first eat a few to be sure they are fresh and fine, then spread the nuts on a baking sheet and dry them out in a 350-degree oven for about 15 minutes, until skins begin to flake off and nut flesh has browned very lightly. Remove from oven, rub nuts a small handful at a time between paper towels to remove as much skin as will easily come off. Grind the nuts by ½-cup batches in an electric blender.

  If you use half ground filberts and half ground blanched almonds rather than almonds alone for the meringues in the following recipe, call your cake Le Progrès rather than Le Succès.

  For an 8-inch cake, serving 8 to 10

  1) Preliminaries

  1 to 2 Tb soft butter

  2 large baking sheets 14 by 16 inches (no-stick if possible)

  ¼ cup flour

  A marker, such as an 8-inch round pot lid, a cake pan, a heart, or whatever shape you wish your cake to be

  A rubber spatula

  6 ounces (1½ cups loosely packed) ground blanched almonds (may be ground in an electric blender)

  1 cup sugar (extra-fine granulated or “instant” recommended)

  A double thickness of waxed paper about 10 by 12 inches

  1 level Tb plus 1½ level tsp unsifted cornstarch

  A fine-meshed sieve

  A canvas pastry bag 12 to 14 inches long with round metal tube opening ⅜ inch in diameter

  Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Rub soft butter over top of baking sheets, covering surface completely. Roll flour all over buttered surface and knock off excess. Make three 8-inch rings or other shapes on baking sheets by drawing around marker with point of rubber spatula. Measure the almonds and sugar onto waxed paper, and work with fingers to remove any lumps. Sieve over this the cornstarch, and mix in with rubber spatula; set aside. Assemble the pastry bag. (Note that you will need pralin— caramelized almonds—for the butter cream in Step 5, and toasted almonds for the sides of the assembled cake, Step 6; toast the almonds for both after the meringues have baked, and the pralin takes but a few minutes.)

  2) The meringue-almond mixture—pâte à Succès

  ¾ cup egg whites (6 egg whites) at room temperature

  A clean, dry bowl and clean, dry electric-mixer blades

  ⅛ tsp salt

  ¼ tsp cream of tartar

  3 Tb sugar

  1½ tsp vanilla extract

  ⅛ tsp almond extract

  The almond-sugar-starch mixture from Step 1

  The assembled pastry bag

  Place egg whites in bowl and start beating at moderately slow speed for 1 to 2 minutes, until they are foamy. Beat in the salt and cream of tartar; gradually increase speed to fast, taking a minute or so, until egg whites form soft peaks. Continuing at fast speed, gradually beat in the 3 Tb sugar, and continue until egg whites form stiff, upstanding peaks. Beat in the vanilla and the almond extracts.

  If you are using a standing mixer, remove bowl from stand; the rest of this operation continues rapidly by hand and your object here is to deflate the egg whites as little as possible—they must continue to hold their volume so that you can form the meringue shapes for baking. Sprinkle about ¼ cup of the almond-sugar-starch mixture over the beaten egg whites; cutting and folding with rubber spatula, delicately blend the two together, rapidly rotating bowl with one hand as you fold with the other. When almost blended, sprinkle on more of the mixture, rapidly fold in, and continue with the rest until all is used; reach all over bottom and sides of bowl with the final addition. The whole blending process should take less than a minute; scoop the meringue into the pastry bag, all of it or as much as will fit in easily.

  3) Forming the 3 meringue disks—les fonds à Succès

  Squeeze out a line of meringue the width of your thumb and ½ inch high all around inner side of line marked on your baking sheet.

  Continue around and around until you have filled the entire space with meringue.

  Smooth top of meringue lightly with a spatula. Immediately make the 2 other meringue shapes in the same manner, using the other baking sheet for the third meringue.

  4) Baking—about 40 minutes at 250 degrees

  Set baking sheets on the upper-middle and lower-middle levels of preheated oven. The meringues are actually to dry out rather than bake; they will not puff up, and they will not change shape, but they will color lightly during baking. They are done as soon as you can gently push them loose from the baking surface, in 30 to 40 minutes. As soon as they are done, slip them carefully with a spatula onto cake racks to cool. They bend a little when still hot from the oven, but rapidly crisp as they cool; they are fragile and break easily, but a crack or break is not a disaster because the meringues are to be covered with frosting and filling.

  5) Butter cream for frosting and filling—crème au beurre à l’anglaise

  1 cup sugar

  A wire whip or hand-held electric beater

  6 egg yolks

  A heavy-bottomed enameled or stainless saucepan 2- to 2½-quart size

  ¾ cup hot milk

  A wooden spoon

  12 to 14 ounces (3 to 3½ sticks) chilled unsalted butter

  1 tsp vanilla extract

  3 Tb kirsch, dark rum, or strong coffee

  Make a crème anglaise (custard sauce) as follows: gradually beat sugar into egg yolks and continue beating for several minutes until mixture is thick and pale yellow. In a thin stream of droplets beat in the hot milk, and set mixture over moderate heat. Stir slowly with wooden spoon, reaching all over bottom of pan, for 4 to 5 minutes or until sauce thickens enough to film spoon with a creamy layer—do not let it come to simmer, but you must heat it to the point where it thickens. Immediately remove from heat and beat vigorously for 1 minute to cool slightly.

  If you wish to continue with an electric mixer on a stand, scrape the custard into the mixer bowl; otherwise proceed with hand-held electric beater (or with a wire whisk). Cut the 3 sticks of chilled butter into ¼-inch slices and add a piece or two at a time, beating vigorously as butter melts and is absorbed; when all the butter has gone in, cream should be cool, smooth, and glossy, like a thick mayonnaise. Beat in the vanilla and kirsch. (If mixture turns grainy, soften rest of butter by beating it or working with fingers, and beat in successive tablespoons until butter cream smooths out.)

  for the frosting:

  2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, melted

  Remove ¼ of the butter cream to a small bowl, stir the smooth
melted chocolate into it, and reserve for frosting top of cake, end of next step. Stir the pralin into the remaining butter cream; this will be the filling.

  for the filling:

  ½ cup almond pralin (ground caramelized almonds)

  Pralin butter cream must have enough body to hold its shape as a filling; chill if necessary. Chocolate butter cream must be perfectly smooth and free of lumps when it covers top of cake: beat well, if necessary, before using.

  6) Assembling the cake

  A tray or baking sheet to set cake rack on

  A flexible-blade steel spatula

  1 cup flaked, shaved, slivered, or chopped blanched almonds, toasted

  One by one, place meringues on a cutting surface, set the marker you used in Step 1 on top, and trim meringues with a small, sharp knife. This is so that edges will line up properly when circumference of cake is iced. Return 1 meringue to cake rack set over tray.