The recipe was posted on smittenkitchen.com. So, okay, I'm no expert, but I made some adjustments after making the cake twice this weekend:
1. Instead of apricot preserves, snip some apricots, cover with water, and cook long enough to yield about 1 cup mashed cooked apricot. I found the sweetness of the preserves to be too sharp, for lack of a better word. Pure apricot would work better, imho.
2. Not normally a chocolate fan, but it's great in this. Still, I'd advise to use half dark and half milk chocolate in the ganache. The pistachio flavor is delicate and is great with the marzipan and apricot, but they're all overwhelmed by so much intense chocolate. Plus I don't like the aforementioned sharpness of apricot with the sharpness of bitter dark chocolate.
3. Double the amount of ground pistachio called for in the recipe. Your layers will be a teeeeensy bit flatter, but not enough to matter and it won't hurt the texture; it's already a sticky, dense, "eggy" kind of cake. In a good way.
4. The roses are easier than they sound. I didn't use cutters, just shaped the petals with my fingers and it was fine.
The recipe was posted on smittenkitchen.com. So, okay, I'm no expert, but I made some adjustments after making the cake twice this weekend:
ReplyDelete1. Instead of apricot preserves, snip some apricots, cover with water, and cook long enough to yield about 1 cup mashed cooked apricot. I found the sweetness of the preserves to be too sharp, for lack of a better word. Pure apricot would work better, imho.
2. Not normally a chocolate fan, but it's great in this. Still, I'd advise to use half dark and half milk chocolate in the ganache. The pistachio flavor is delicate and is great with the marzipan and apricot, but they're all overwhelmed by so much intense chocolate. Plus I don't like the aforementioned sharpness of apricot with the sharpness of bitter dark chocolate.
3. Double the amount of ground pistachio called for in the recipe. Your layers will be a teeeeensy bit flatter, but not enough to matter and it won't hurt the texture; it's already a sticky, dense, "eggy" kind of cake. In a good way.
4. The roses are easier than they sound. I didn't use cutters, just shaped the petals with my fingers and it was fine.
still having crazy cake lust!
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