How to Make Strawberry Vacherin
Serves: 8
Preparation time: 30 mins
Cooking time: 30 mins
Ingredients needed to make Strawberry Vacherin:
- 70 gm all purpose flour, sifted
- 150 gm icing sugar, plus more for dusting
- 225 gm caster sugar
- 250 gm fresh strawberries
- 100 gm Toblerone chocolate
- 1 75 gm whole almonds, blanched
- 300 ml thickened cream, whipped
- 110 gm unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 5 egg whites
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Cooking instructions for Strawberry Vacherin:
- Warm up your oven to 120 degrees F.
- Toss the almonds into a roasting pan and pop into the oven to roast slightly for 20 minutes.
- Tip them into a food processor and grind them into a fine powder.
- Carve out three circles, each 20 cm wide, out of a grease-proof paper and brush a lashing of oil or melted butter onto one side of each.
- Lay them out onto baking trays, with their coated side facing up.
- Whisk the egg whites along with half of the sugar, using an electric mixer, until they form stiff peaks.
- Sprinkle the ground almonds as well as rest of the sugar and fold them together until well combined into an even mixture.
- Dust the flour into it, followed by the drizzling of melted butter and stir them into the mixture until mixed thoroughly.
- Spread it out onto 1 cm thick layer onto the greased circles and bake them in the hot oven for 50 minutes.
- Remove the papers and allow them to cool completely.
- Meanwhile, whisk the cream and icing sugar thoroughly until the mixture thickens considerably.
- Stir in a splash of vanilla extract until it is blended into the whipped cream and set aside until necessary.
- Break the Toblerone chocolate into smaller chunks and toss them into a heatproof bowl.
- Place the bowl onto a larger saucepan with simmering water in such a way that it doesn’t come in contact with the water directly.
- Cook until the chocolate melts and remove from heat; set aside to cool it down slightly.
- Place one meringue disc onto a cake plate and spread half of the melted chocolate on top.
- Top it up with a uniform layer of 1/3 of the whipped cream and repeat the layers until all the ingredients are used up.
- Slice the strawberries longitudinally into quarters and lay them out onto the topmost layer of whipped cream to decorate.
- Sprinkle extra icing sugar on top to cover and serve.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
