I admit it freely. I'm addicted to reality cooking shows. I love the drama and the backstabbing - it's my biggest guilty secret (well, apart from my even more guilty addiction to The Vampire Diaries).Masterchef was probably the show that kicked it all off - after Huey's Cooking Adventures, which I watched when I was 12. I normally avoided the "Masterclass" episodes because of the lack of general cattiness between contestants but one episode I did catch showed the lovely model-cum-chef Lorraine Pascale baking a Mojito Genoise cake. It was useless resisting the overwhelming urge to cook this cake after seeing that it contained so many of my favourite ingredients - lime, mint, pecans and of course Malibu.
Whilst the recipe wasn't freely available on the Masterchef website, plenty of other websites had the recipe after the episode screened.
A genoise is a sponge cake with no raising agent, relying on the air beaten into the eggs during mixing. Making this recipe had a number of firsts for me (each more terrifying than the last) - making a genoise and a dry caramel in particular. The recipe also uses a bain-marie, which I'm relatively familiar with but still alarmed by for some reason.
This recipe is absolutely delicious (and addictive) and disappeared in less than two days. The pecan praline, which uses the dry caramel, is extremely simple to make once you get the knack of it and is a perfect balance of bitter and sweet. The recipe blitzes the praline in a food processor to make a crumb to cover the cake. I was feeling lazy and couldn't be bothered to wash up another thing (this recipe does have quite a bit of washing up) so I just gave them a bit of a whack with a pestle and scattered the chunks around the cake. It wasn't quite as attractive and the praline chunks seemed to disappear faster than the cake did.
Recipe adapted from http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0007275943/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0007275943&linkCode=as2&tag=sugsna-20
Mojito Genoise Cake
Ingredients
Sugar Syrup
50ml water
150g brown sugar
150ml Malibu (or white) rum
2 limes
Fresh bunch of mint leaves
Sponge
260g plain flour
260g castor sugar
115g melted and cooled unsalted butter
6 eggs
Pecan Praline
150g roughly chopped pecans
150g white sugar
Lime Buttercream
300g icing sugar
150g softened butter
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 lime
Method
1. For the sugar syrup - Make this as early as possible to let the mint and lime flavours infuse in the syrup. Put the water, brown sugar, Malibu and the juice from the limes in a small saucepan and bring to a low boil for about 2-3 minutes. Let it simmer until it starts to thicken slightly. Take the pan off the heat and add the mint and the zest from the limes. Set aside to cool.
2. For the sponge - Preheat the oven to 200°C and grease two 8-inch cake pans (preferably spring-form) and line the base with baking paper. Fill a medium saucepan a third of the way with water and bring to a boil, then turn off the heat.
Crack 6 eggs into a large metal bowl (this really needs to quite big, I had to swap bowls halfway through because the eggs aerate so much) and give them a quick whisk with a fork. Add the castor sugar and place the bowl on top of the pan of hot water, making sure the bottom of the bowl isn't touching the water and that the bowl fits snugly on the pan. Whisk the mixture with a electric hand beater for about 10 minutes. The heat helps the eggs really fluff up. Remove from the heat and continue to beat for another 5 minutes. The eggs will have hugely increased in volume and should fall in soft ribbons.
Pour the melted butter around the edges of the bowl and gently fold into the batter using a rubber spatula. Repeat with the flour, doing half first and then adding the rest. This can take a while to incorporate everything in - make sure you scrape the bottom in particular - and try to get out all the lumps. Be gentle so as to minimise the amount of air knocked out of the batter.
Pour half the batter into each pan and bake for 20 minutes. Let the cakes cool completely before removing from the pans.
3. For the pecan praline - This is where the dry caramel comes in to play. Evenly cover the bottom of a medium saucepan with the sugar and place over low heat. Leave to allow the sugar to melt which can take a couple of minutes to happen. Nothing seems to happen for a little while and then suddenly it will start bubbling and turning brown. Do not touch or stir the mixture.
As soon as it is all melted add the pecans, give it a stir to mix using a wooden spoon (not plastic or rubber) and pour onto baking paper on a tray. Once cooled you can either give it a quick bash with a pestle or if you want to be prettier, break it into small chunks and blitz it in a food processor until it forms a crumb.
4. For the buttercream - Use an electric beater on high to beat the butter and icing sugar until pale and creamy. Add the vanilla paste, the juice and the zest of the lime and combine.
5. Assembly - Take the cakes out of the tins and cover generously with sugar syrup. Slicing off the very top of the cake allows the syrup to better soak into the sponge. Place one cake on a plate with syrup side up and cover with a layer of lime buttercream. Place the second cake on top, syrup side down. Spread the rest of the buttercream on the top and sides of the cake. Cover the sides with the praline by pressing handfuls into the buttercream.
I recommend enjoying a generous slice with a Pina Colada or more appropriately, a mojito.
The large pecan chunks don't make the prettiest cake but nonetheless, absolutely delicious.
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