Lisa Loves Life: Lisa the Patissiere!

I know that sounds a bit ahead of things, but that's really how I felt yesterday!
I have been baking a lot lately as I need to practice on my patissier skills for who knows when...

I've been making all sorts of sweets. Such as the ordinary cake in all kinds of varieties such as chocolate/orange, lemon/almond, apple/marzipan. And last tuesday I made the famous Italian (from Napoli but introduced there by French cooks) dolce 'Baba al rum', which turned out to be the favorite dessert of my Love's colleague who I always send sweets to taste, which she doesn't seem to mind. I gave the original recipe a twist by filling them with orange-blossom-water marzipan, I made that morning.
It's a sort of brioche type of dough, which is (just after baking) soaked in a sugar syrup and liqueur. I chose Gran Marnier as it suited the marzipan so well.

For a while a had been looking for the recipe of my grandfathers favorite pastry 'Hazelnoot-schuim gebakje' but I could not find it anywhere. Yesterday I took the courage to make these sweet-bombs by putting a few recipes together.

Here is how I got to work:

For 4 individual cakes you'll need:

For the praline: (and a good amount extra to poor over ice, yoghurt,..)
- 250 gr hazelnuts, and about 12 hole ones for decoration (peeled and roasted)
- 50 ml water
- 250 gr sugar

Heat the nuts in a frying pan for a couple of minutes. In the meantime you put a thick-bottomed pan on the heat with the water and sugar, bring to boil. Chop the nuts finely in you blender ( not too fine, you want some crunchiness). When the syrup starts to brown,take off the heat, poor in the nuts and stir quickly. Poor the praline on a sheet of parchment paper and spread out. Leave to cool.
Crush with you rolling pin until fine. Prepare a plate with a good layer of the praline to roll your pastry in later on.

For the meringues:
- 150 gr egg whites
- 40 gr of praline (hey, you just made that, how convenient!)
- 175 gr of fine white sugar

Preheat the oven on 140 degrees C. Prepare two baking trays with parchment paper.
Beat the egg whites with the sugar (in three parts) until stiff and shiny. Mix in the praline with a spoon.
Fill a pastry bag (spuitzak/ sachetto per dolci) with the egg whites and make round shapes with a diameter of ca. 6 centimeter. You should get about 20 pieces.
Bake them for 65 minutes. And leave to cool.

Then for the mocha-cream you'll need:
- 60 gr of egg yolks
- 50 ml water
- 75 gr of white sugar
- 180 gr of butter (room temperature)
- a few drops of vanilla essence
- 2 spoons of strong coffee, cold

Beat the egg yolks with a dash of salt until light and airy. Make a syrup with the water and sugar in a thick-bottomed pan, boil until reduced to a semi-thick syrup without coloring! Poor the syrup slowly in with the egg yolks while beating. Beat until cooled to room-temperature. Beat, in another bowl, the butter until sof and airy. Mix in the vanilla. Then mix the butter in with the egg yolks, spoon by spoon. Until you have a smooth cream. Mix in the coffee until smooth again. Prepare a pastry bag with the cream.

To make all the ingredients into those fancy looking cakes:

Take a meringue as the bottom. With your pastry bag, make a layer of cream on top of it. Then put the next meringue on top. Fill up the space between the meringues and make a thin layer of cream all around the side, not on the top, so the praline sticks to it. Roll it trough the praline and so the side is completely covered. Take your pastry bag with cream and make those fabulous dots on the top until covered. sprinkle some whole nuts on the top.....Done! Now, just repeat for another three times and you're done!