Tivoli cakes

Meringue

• 2
  
  egg whites
  
• 1 3/4
  
  cups white sugar
  
• 1
  
  dash vinegar
  

1. Weigh your egg whites – you need three times the amount of sugar. Then start by beating the whites until they foam up a bit and then gradually add the sugar – I used a stand mixer and it took about 12 minutes until all the sugar was absorbed. You can test the progress along the way – the meringue should be completely smooth without any grittyness from the sugar. Just before it’s done, add a dash of vinegar – I used a nice cherry vinegar.
2. In the finished cake the meringues are fitted on top of portion sized shell baked of sweet pastry. So when you know the size you want to make – mine are quite small so people get two each- draw similar sized circles on a sheet of parchment paper for baking.

   Pipe each meringue in a generous dome on the circle. Bake at least one hour at 285F.

Rum cream

• 2
  
  egg yokes
  
• 2
  
  tablespoons sugar
  
• 1/4
  
  ounce good quality golden rum
  
• 6
  
  ounces whipping cream
  

1. Beat the two egg whites with the sugar until it becomes a smooth, pale yellow color, then add the rum.
2. Beat the cream until it is light an fluffy. Then carefully fold most of the whipped cream into the beaten egg yolkes with the rum. You need a not too runny cream.
3. Well the format for these recipes does not allow me to add the other to things you need to make: Sweet pastry and apple sauce.

   For the pastry: Crumble 4 oz of butter into 8 oz of flour, add 3 oz of sugar and one egg. As quick as you can bring the dough together and then cool it for at least 1 hour in the fridge. If it’s too dry add a teaspoon of water at the time.

   After and hour roll the dough out and cut 4 or 8 circles that fit into the kind of cake mold you use. You need a small pie shape – you can use a muffin form and just press the round of dough into it. Blind bake for 16 minutes at 375 f. The pastry shell should only be lightly baked – or the cake will turn into a mess when you eat it.

4. Apple Sauce: Core and peel two sweet, fragrant apples. Cut them into pieces and put them into a sauce pan, add the juice of a quarter of a lemon. Scrape the seeds out of a vanilla pod and mix that with about two table spoons of sugar – add to sauce along with the pods and cook for 5-8 minutes. Cool.
5. Assembly: Fill the pastry shells with apple sauce, pipe a ring of whipped cream along the edge of the pastry. Dip the meringues into the rum cream and pipe a thin line of currant – or rhubarb – jelly in a swirl down the cake. As is evident from the picture, my rhubarb jelly was too runny.
6. Variation: Make half the cakes with rhubarb sauce in stead of apple sauce, it you have those at hand. I cooked two stalks with 2 spoon fulls of sugar, a small rosemary twig and a tiny ear of star anise as well as a bit of water. Cooking time: 5-8 minutes.
7. The raw egg cream: Use pasteurized egg yolks if you are at all concerned with eating uncooked egg.

   I’m from viking stock so I live dangerously.