Almond Shamah Chiffon

I was a little late with this cake. I saw everyone’s posts for last weekend’s Heavenly Cakes project and just couldn’t resist making it myself. It looked so good, and I love Amaretto, and I knew I already had some blanched almonds in the freezer, so what could go wrong, right? All I would need to pick up was the seedless raspberry jam.

So, Tuesday night, I started at about 6:30, and got everything ready for the cake. First, toast the almonds.

Those get ground up with a bit of the flour, then add the rest of the dry ingredients. I guess I missed taking a picture of this, but it’s really not all that interesting. I did discover that our food processor’s blade doesn’t quite sit on the bottom of the bowl, so you’re constantly having to stop and move things around a bit, but I eventually got things ground up. I guess I never noticed this because Jay really does all the cooking, and I don’t use the food processor that often for baking.

You then beat the egg yolks and sugar, until they go from this colour….

… to about this colour:

Dust the flour mixture over the egg yolk mixture and set it aside.

Now go wash your bowl and whisk beater. Go on. I’ll wait. What? You want ME to wash it? Ok, fine. 😛

Somehow, I missed getting a picture of the beaten egg whites (recurring theme, anyone?), but hey.. you know what those look like by now. Fold the flour into the yolk mixture, then lighten that with some of the egg whites, then fold in the rest of the egg whites. Divide it between your prepared pans.

After they’ve baked, you need to do a bit of flipping things around to ensure they’re both cooling right side up, but that’s not too hard, as long as you have 3 cooling racks ready to go.

While my cakes were baking, I finished up the dishes from baking and supper. Jay had made a delicious rosé sauce and spaghetti squash to serve it on, so there was a few pots and whatnot to clean up. I looked at the clock when the cakes came out, and wow! It was only 7:30. I’m on a roll! Dishes done, cakes cooling… time to get the Amaretto syrup started while those guys cool. *reach up to the top shelf of my cabinet* Uh oh. Where’s my Amaretto? That’s the one liquor I normally keep in stock!

…

So, when you get back from the 1 hr round trip to the nearest LCBO, you need to scrape (or in the case of the bottom crust, which has parchment stuck to it, peel) the crusts off the top & bottom of the tiers so that you can soak them with Amaretto syrup. I ended up taking about 1/4″ or so off the top of my tiers just to get them nice and level. I also took a hint out of the Cake Bible (I think it was in the instructions for whatever the strawberry showcase cake was that had a chocolate génoise as the base), and used a dental syringe that my husband never ended up using after having some work done a while back. I know it’s a lousy picture, but you get the idea.

Since there’s about a cup of liquid, you’ll be putting about 1/4 cup on each side of the layers, so I didn’t want to even think of attempting to brush that quantity of syrup onto anything.

I ended up making the raspberry mousseline from the Miette Tomboy recipe, because I didn’t know how long I could expect the whipped cream to hold up, and I wanted to let this sit with the syrup for a day before eating. By this point in the night, I was getting a little impatient and tired, so I didn’t really take any good pictures of the process of making the mousseline. It curdled horribly, too, so I can’t say it was my most successful frosting experience. I took Rose’s advice and warmed it up a little, then beat it some, then warmed a little more… finally got something that kinda vaguely resembled a buttercream and put it on my cake.

I had pretty much exactly the right amount of frosting. I think I’d want a little more if I were making this for a particular occasion, because the frosting on the sides is really more of a crumb coat than anything.