Sonntag, 2. Mai 2010

Cardinal Slices (Kardinalschnitte)

On the special wish of a colleague (in detail, she said: "Can't you make something like THAT???") and because I had some eggwhites (due to icercream-making for TWD), I tried my luck with Cardinal Slices (possibly the correct translation is Viennese Cardinal). I used to like this cake when I was a child very, very much. I mostly go for the classic version. The ones with chocolate, heavy raspberry-cream or cappucino or not my cup of tea.

To me, despite most recipes are classfied as "easy" the procedure sounds difficult: Pipe alternating stripes of beaten egg whites and an egg-sugar-flour-mix, bake for about 20 minutes, cut in half, so you get six stripes, spread jam on the top of two stripes, then put some whipped cream (I mixed mine with some strawberries) on the layers, again the same with the second layer, and top it with the third one. Nevertheless, what I got is anything but Cardinal Slices. I will have a look if I can rescue them. Maybe with white chocolate ganache.

The "merengue" did not turn out fluffy and light as it should, but chewy, dense and sunken. The egg-mix was much too liquid. I alreday thought so when I poured it in between the eggwhite stripes. The two textures suddenly mixed, what should definitely not happen.

Lucky me, most of the few people possibly reading this have never been to Austria, so I guess they don't know what Cardinal Slices should look like.
But, as I am an honest person, this is the original, and a picture of a variation with raspberries and I guess coffee: