Christmas Cake with Nuts
Ingredients
- For the cake
- 5 eggs
- 180 grams sugar
- 120 grams Pastry flour
- 60 grams cornstarch
- 1 pinch salt
- For the icing
- 1 packet Chocolate pudding powder (for 500 ml of liquid)
- 500 milliliters milk
- 3 Tbsps sugar
- powdered sugar (for dusting)
- 180 grams Nougat
- 350 grams butter
- 50 grams powdered sugar
- 200 grams whole, peeled almonds
- For the garnish
- 6 centiliters Rum
- 80 grams roasted slivered almonds
- Sugar pearls (gold and silver)
- 3 Tbsps Chocolate shaving
Preparation steps
Preheat the oven to 180°C (approximately 350°F).
For the cake, separate eggs and beat yolks with half of sugar until frothy. Mix flour with corn starch and beat egg whites until stiff with a pinch of salt. Add flour to egg yolk mixture and mix. Fold in egg whites to the batter. Pour batter into a springform pan lined with parchment paper, spread batter smooth and bake in preheated oven about 40 minutes. Test to see if cake is cooked with a toothpick.
For the cream, mix pudding powder with 3 tablespoons milk. Bring remaining milk to a boil in a pot. Add sugar. Stir in milk pudding mixture, boil and pour into a bowl. Let cool and dust with icing sugar. Cut nougat into small pieces and melt in a water bath over hot, not boiling water. Remove nougat from water bath and let cool.
Beat butter with white sugar until creamy and gradually stir in pudding and nougat.
Fold in half of almonds.
Remove baked cake from the oven, allow to cool slightly, remove cake from the pan and let cool completely on a wire rack. Cut cake in half horizontally twice and drizzle cake pieces with rum.
Place a layer of cake on a cake plate, cover with 1/3 of cream mixture and cover with another layer of cake. Repeat this process again and then fully coat the cake with the remaining cream. Garnish as desired with toasted almonds, remaining whole almonds, sugar pearls and chocolate shavings. Allow to set for 2 hours in the refrigerator. To serve, cut into pieces and place on plates.
