Kyiv cake

Ingredients

• Egg whites — aged a day8
• Sugar450 g
• Cashews or hazelnuts250 g
• Flour50 g
• Butter300 g
• Milk150 ml
• Egg yolks2
• Cocoa powder20 g
• Vanilla sugar1 tsp
• Brandy2 tbsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Leave the whites in an open bowl at room temperature for twelve hours.

   10 min

2. 2

   Toast the nuts ten minutes, chop them coarsely and mix them with the flour and part of the sugar.

   18 min

3. 3

   Whip the whites to a foam, adding the rest of the sugar a spoon at a time, to firm glossy peaks.

   15 min

4. 4

   Fold in the nut mixture with a spatula in three additions and divide it between two tins.

   10 min

5. 5

   Dry the layers at 150 °C for two hours and leave them in the switched-off oven until completely cold.

   130 min

6. 6

   Cook a syrup of milk, yolks and sugar to thickness, cool it completely and beat it into the softened butter.

   30 min

7. 7

   Split the cream: vanilla and brandy into the larger part, cocoa into the smaller. Assemble the cake and chill it six hours.

   30 min

About the dish

The whites for the layers are left at room temperature for twelve hours. Aged whites whip denser and give a meringue that does not sink as it bakes.

The layers are dried at 150 °C for two hours rather than baked. The difference matters: meringue has to lose moisture rather than colour, or it stays chewy inside.

The charlotte cream is built on an egg and milk syrup. It is not butter beaten with sugar: the syrup is cooked to thickness, cooled completely and only then worked into the butter.

Worth knowing

• — Let the layers stand overnight after drying. Fresh ones crumble at assembly; rested ones cut cleanly.
• — The syrup and the butter must be at the same temperature. Warm syrup melts the butter, cold syrup curdles the cream into grains.
• — The cake rests six hours at least, ideally a full day. In that time the meringue softens slightly under the cream and the texture becomes what it should be.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

8 g

Fat

38 g

Carbs

62 g

More from Ukraine

• Ukrainian borscht with pampushky — Borscht on pork ribs with aged salo crushed with garlic, and garlic pampushky alongside.
• Cherry varenyky — Dumplings of whole cherries and sugar. The juice stays inside if the fruit is tossed in starch first.
• Home-cured salo — Pork back fat dry-cured with garlic and spices, matured in the cold for a week.