Delight your guest with this recipe.
Ingredients
- for the chocolate sponge:
- 170 g unsalted butter
- 120 g icing sugar
- 7 egg yolks
- 7 egg whites
- 120 g caster sugar
- 170 g dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa)
- 150 g plain flour
- for the vanilla cream:
- 60 g plain yogurt
- 50 g icing sugar
- 125 ml cream (lightly whipped)
- lemon juice (to taste)
- 1/2 vanilla bean (split lengthways and scraped)
- for the pecan praline:
- 200 g caster sugar
- 100 ml water
- 200 g pecan nuts
- raspberry coulis
- 250 g raspberries
- 50-75 g sugar to sweeten the bitterness of the raspberries
- for the beef:
- 500 g milk chocolate (melted)
- gold leaf (gnough gold leaf to decorate cake)
- fresh raspberries
- 1 punnet of fresh raspberries
Method
- For the Chocolate Sponge:
- Cream together the softened butter and icing sugar.
- Mix in the egg yolks one at a time.
- Meanwhile, beat together the egg whites and granulated sugar to soft peaks. Melt the chocolate over a double boiler then mix the lukewarm chocolate and flour into the butter mixture.
- Gently fold in the egg whites. Spread the batter thinly on a pre buttered and lined baking sheet and bake in a 180°C oven for about 15 minutes.
- For the Vanilla Cream:
- In a bowl, combine the yogurt, icing sugar, lemon juice and vanilla. Whip the cream and gently fold into the mixture.
- For the Pecan Praline:
- Roughly chop the pecan nuts and set aside.
- Place the caster sugar and water in heavy based saucepan and cook on a high heat. The sugar and water will combine when the water heats up a little.
- Boil the mixture until you see the mixture turn to a light golden brown colour.
- Be very careful at this stage as you can burn the caramel very quickly.
- When the caramel turns a nice golden colour add the pecan praline.
- Pour on a non stick mat and leave to cool.
- Do not touch any caramel as it is extremely hot.
- When the mixture is cool break it up into manageable lumps and set aside.
- For the Raspberry Coulis:
- Place the raspberries and enough water to sweeten the bitterness into a small pot.
- Add a small bit of water and boil until the raspberries turn to a mush.
- Pass the mixture through a sieve and reduce the strained mixture until you achieve a jam like texture.
- Set aside to cool.
- To Serve:
- Cut the cake into 70 x 70mm pieces.
- Cut the square pieces down the middle. With the bottom of the cake spread a bit of the raspberry coulis around and then place some of the pecan praline on top.
- Pipe cream on top of this then place the other half of cake on top.
- Place a spoonful of melted chocolate on top of the cake and spread it out until it almost reaches the edges.
- Decorate with raspberries and gold leaf.
- For a really extra special finish you could make four sides out of milk chocolate and make the lid out of white chocolate.
- This takes a lot of time, but is well worth the finish.
- Just make sure you know the length, width and height of the finished cake before you start creating.
