Sans rival

Four full-size cashew meringue layers under buttercream, trimmed square and chilled not frozen.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg, dairy (butter), dairy (cream).

Ingredients

layers

• 6 egg whites
• 220 g caster sugar
• 250 g cashews, coarsely chopped
• 0.25 teaspoon cream of tartar

buttercream

• 6 egg yolks
• 180 g caster sugar
• 4 tablespoons water
• 350 g butter, soft
• 100 g cashews, chopped, to finish

Method

1. THE MERINGUE AND THE BUTTERCREAM ARE MADE AS ON THE SILVANA PAGE and are not re-explained here. This page is about building them as a SLAB, which is a different object with different problems: four full-size layers, trimmed square, and chilled rather than frozen.
2. COARSELY CHOPPED CASHEWS, NOT GROUND. That is the first real difference. Ground nuts give a fine dense disc that suits a small sandwich; here you want nuts you can feel, and the coarse pieces also keep the big layers from going solid.
3. Pipe or spread four rectangles of meringue 25 by 18 cm on lined trays, each about 8 mm thick, and bake at 140C for 45 to 50 minutes, then cool in the switched-off oven.
4. Big layers take longer than the small discs do, and an underbaked middle in a 25 cm sheet turns to toffee under the buttercream within a day.
5. Trim all four to exactly the same size with a serrated knife while they are on the tray. Do it before assembling: trimming a built cake shatters the layers.
6. Keep the trimmings. Crushed, they go round the sides.
7. BUILD ON THE SERVING PLATE, because a finished sans rival cannot be lifted. Layer, buttercream spread thin and even, layer, and so on, finishing with buttercream on top.
8. Thin layers of buttercream, not generous ones. Too thick and the whole thing slides sideways as it settles.
9. Chopped cashews on top and crushed trimmings pressed round the sides.
10. CHILL, DO NOT FREEZE. Frozen, a slab this size cannot be cut without shattering the meringue. Four hours in the fridge, and cut with a long knife wiped between slices.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes