Wheat-free dessert!

At the beginning of January we had a big reunion with our family members from Toronto. As everyone usually loves my baking, I couldn’t leave them without something sweet. So I made some Vanilla Cupcakes. Turnes out,  it’s been a little over a month that half of our Toronto family has been on a wheat-free diet. So only two of them could enjoy my cupcakes:( Oh nooo, why didn’t they tell me?!

Apparently, this wheat-free diet is one of the latest trends in healthy-eating. It all started after they read a book “Wheat Belly” by William Davis, where he tells about the numerous positive effects of a wheat-free diet. And our relatives confirmed that after being on such a diet for a month, they already feel much better.

Being on this diet doesn’t mean you have to say “NO” to bread, pasta, pizza and pastry forever. You can simply substitute wheat flour with some other flour, like almond flour, rice flour, quinoa flour, etc…

So the other day I was going through my baking recipe book in search for something I could bake using some egg-whites sitting in my fridge. And I found this amazing recipe of a wheat-free cake. (Next time they come to Montreal I’ll make this for them!)

“Danoise” (recipe taken from the French pastry book “Petit Larousse Pâtissier”).

Ingredients:

Icing sugar – 150 gr

Almond powder – 135 gr

Egg whites – 5

Granulated sugar – 50 gr

For the butter cream:

Butter, soften – 250 gr

Water- 2 ounces

Sugar powder -140 gr

Eggs – 2

Egg yolks – 2

Instant coffee 10 gr

Fore the decoration:

Almonds sliced and roasted

Icing sugar

Preparation:

Mix and sift icing sugar and almond powder. Whisk the egg whites using a mixer. Add granulated sugar, 1/3rd at a time. Continue whisking on medium/high-speed untill you get  “meringue”. The whites should be all cloudy and foamy at this point. Stop the mixer. Add the mix of almond powder and icing sugar, a little bit at a time. Don’t whisk the meringue, just lift it with a spatula and spread the almond powder/icing sugar mixture evenly.

Preheat the oven to 170 C. (338 F)

Cover the baking sheets with parchment paper. Put the batter in a pastry bag and make 2 circles of 22 cm. Start from the center and go towards the edges making a circle. Bake for 35 minutes and let it cool.

Prepare Butter Cream.

Put the butter in a bowl and using a back of a wooden spoon stir it into a creamy consistency. Pour water in a little saucepan, add sugar and bring to boil on medium heat. Let it coom till it reaches the temperature 120 C. Whisk the whole eggs and egg yolks using a mixer. When the syrup is ready pour it very slowly into the bowl with the eggs and continue whisking till the mixture cools down completely. Then add instant coffee diluted in water.

When the cream is ready, spread it on one of the disks and then place the other disk on top. Decorate with roasted almonds and icing sugar.

Note: For this recipe it’s recommended that the egg whites sit in the fridge for 3 days before making Danoise. Another note, you can also make little cookies instead of a big one.

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