Early this year, I visited Bangkok with a few of my friends. Mainly a shopping trip. It seems a ritual for us to go to Lenotre in Siam Paragon everytime we fly there. Last year too, it was our first time. If ever we’d go to Bangkok again, we’d definitely visit Lenotre again, and also other cafes near by.

I remember, in 2009, when we first stumbled upon the shop, many beautiful cakes and pastries greeted us gleefully. I was quite interested in the little piece of bright red and green cake. Immediately, I knew it’d be a pistachio and raspberry or other red berries combo. It’s a classic pairing between the both. Ruby and Emerald ? Well, both expensive and exquisite. Then in 2010, we went in, and we ordered it too! along with many other cakes.

Guess we’re not going to Bangkok in 2011. So, I kinda decided one FINE day, to remake the cake, Emeraude

It’s been a very very long time since I made an entremet, or something beyond. Why ? Well, I guess that’s the cons if you bake alot of novelty cakes and cupcakes for sale. By the time you want to make a cake for yourself, you’d think twice. I wasn’t keen on a slab of butter cake or another dozen of chocolate cupcakes, that’s for sure. Inspiration caught me, and I wanted to make LCB stuffs!!

So I decided on this pistachio and raspberry cake.

Because it was quite experimental, in terms of recipe yields, I ended up with a few verrines. I made a 6″ square cake, and while trying to scale down the recipes and rewrite them, I had a few left overs here and there.

So now you see, verrine cups come to the rescue!! I bought them, thinking “OH maybe one day when i make something, and have leftovers, I’m just gonna verrine-fy them :D” Indeed!

And that’s the Persian Fairy floss, that my ex-housemate from Sydney brought for me. Yay!! But it became quite sticky because of the humidity level at home and it was quite hard to tear them apart, giving them the fluff texture!

So what exactly is this piece of thing here! Here are the break downs.

From the bottom,

1. Pistachio dacquoise

2. White Chocolate bavarian cream

3. pistachio joconde soaked with rose water imbibage

4. white choc bavarian cream

5. raspberry gelee

6. white choc bavarian cream

7. pistachio joconde

8. strawberry jam glaze

There wasn’t exactly a full recipe on this exact cake. So I had to source the recipes from my LCB days, some cookbooks and from the internet. Or even take the basic recipe and adapt with another ingredients. So all the time, I was hoping it wouldn’t be too wobbly or that the components would differ too much in texture.

If you’d like to make this cake you can use this recipe, or simplify it by skipping the dacquoise. Well, ok, I wouldn’t, honestly. Dacquoise has a slighty nuttier flavour and more biscuit like texture compared to the joconde. Variant textures are important in a dessert, at least for me. But I think the joconde layer was too thick. Shall probably make it flatter next time around.

Ok, enough blablabla. recipe please.

Emeraude

Raspberry and Pistachio entremet with White bavarian cream

(makes a 6″ square cake, and 4 verrine cups)

Pistachio Dacquoise
7g sugar
62g egg white
50g icing sugar
70g finely ground pistachio
35g roughly chopped pistachio
pinch of cream of tartar

White chocolate bavarian cream
66g milk
70ml cream
1/2 vanilla pod, seeds scrapped
76g egg yolk
5g gelatine
180g white couverture chocolate
265 cream.

Pistachio Joconde
125g icing sugar
60g almond meal
65g pistachio meal (finely grounded pistachio)
150g whole eggs
33g flour
25g melted butter
100g egg whites
16g sugar

Rose imbibage (soaking syrup)
50g sugar
100ml water
4-5 dried rose buds (or 1 tsp rose water)

Raspberry gelee
1.5 tsp gelatin powder
15ml cold water
1 cups frozen raspberry
20g caster sugar

Method

1. Make raspberry gelee layer first. Mix gelatin powder and cold water and set to bloom. In a pot, cook raspberry and caster sugar. Crush with a whisk, or blend in a blender. Heat gelatin in microwave for 30 secs or till completely melted. Pour into raspberry and mix well. It’s optional to strain the raspberry puree. I personally like abit of crunchy texture, so I kept the seeds. Lay a cling film on a board, and place square cake ring. Pour into cake ring and set for min 2 hours.

2. Make pistachio dacquoise. Whisk egg white and a pinch of cream of tartar till soft peaks. Add in caster sugar and whisk till slighly glossy and stiff. Sift icing sugar and mix with ground pistachio. Gently fold into egg whites. LAstly, scatter roughly chopped pistachio into the batter. Pour into a sheet pan lined with Silpat or parchment paper, lightly spread it with spatula. Bake at 200 C for 15-17 minutes. Remove from oven, and cut a 6″ square. If there are leftoevers, cut out for verrines.

3. Make pistachio joconde. In a mixing bowl, whisk icing sugar, almond and pistachio meal and whole eggs till light and almost double in volume. It should be at a ribbon stage. In a separate bowl, whisk egg whites till soft peak. add in caster sugar and whisk till medium peak. Set aside. Gently fold in flour into whole eggs batter. Gradually fold in melted butter. Then lastly fold in meringue in 2-3 batches. Pour into a sheet pan lined with Silpat or parchment paper, spread it (it should be twice more than the dacquoise batter). Bake at 220 C for 8 minutes. Cut 2 pieces of 6″ square, and leave the remains to make verrines.

4. Make imbibage. In a small pot, put everything inside and bring to a boil for 1 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

5. Make white chocolate bavarian cream. First make cream anglaise. Mix gelatine with 1 tbsp of cold water, let it set. Bring milk, cream and vanilla beans to a light boil (NOT rapid boil). Pour 1/4 of the milk and cream into egg yolks and stir with a whisk. Gradually pour in the remaining cream and whisk constantly. Pour in the cream back into the pot and let it cook over very low heat, while whisking constantly. The cream will thicken a bit (or coats the back of a wooden spoon). When done, remove from heat. Meanwhile, melt white chocolate in the microwave or over a bain marie. Melt gelatin too. Pour gelatin into creme anglaise, stir. Then add in white chocolate and stir till well incorporated. Pass the entire batter through a sieve to remove and possible cooked eggs, or unmelted gelatin or chocolate. Put the bowl over a ice water bath to cool down the mixture. Whisk cream in a separate bowl to medium peaks. Lightly fold in whipped cream into the white chocolate mixture.

6. Assembly. Line a layer of pistachio dacquoise at the bottom of a 6″ square ring. With a pasty brush, baste with abit of imbibage ontop. Pour a layer of white chocolate bavarian cream. Add pistachio joconde. Soak with imbibage. Pour in a layer of cream. Lay the gelee on top. Pour cream. Add the 2nd layer of pistachio joconde, and soak with imbibage with brush. Pour a thin layer of cream ontop. Leave to chill for a few hours. When the cream has set, pour glaze on top.

7. To make verrines, same thing, layer everything into the cups, but you can do dacquoise, cream, gelee, cream, joconde, cream, since it’s shallower. For me, I used raspberry compoted cooked with a bit of starch instead since I didn’t have any extra gelee.

Enjoy 🙂