Hungry and thumbing through the Passover catering catalog from Eli Zabar's that dropped out of my newspaper recently, I came across this gorgeous photo of their Mile High Lemon Meringue Cake and had an emergency drooling situation on my hands.
Normally, I'm not a big meringue person, but this cake is so beautifully executed, it's hard to recall those early childhood memories of meringue that didn't do me right. And this is no pie, folks, this is a flourless cake. There's been a lot of chatter in these parts lately about flourless chocolate cakes for Passover, but let's consider lemon for a moment: fresh, bright, refreshing, cleansing. And flourless; reminds me of deep rich lemon curd, or sassy tart lemonade. Could you go wrong?
Well, yes...
That cake is absolutely beautiful!!! Last year for passover I made a lemon-almond cake, it was the worse think I have ever baked! I'm not sure where I went wrong with it, and unfortunatley the taste of it was so awful, I have never wanted to attempt it again. Although looking at that picture, makes me want to give one more try:)
I think that I will try this, but I am going to use a little kitchen torch to toast the meringue.
Arin,
Let us know how it goes... and send photos if you can.
Definitely (if I can figure out how to use my new camera).
The cake is indeed beautiful, but if you are not a meringue person, you should probably trust that instinct. Meringue's deceptively insubstantial, yet voluminous, sculptural and oh-so-yummy looking when slightly carmelized, but it's just a medium for sugar and is not to be trusted... That Parisian flourless chocolate cake from earlier this week sounded like a real assurance of flavor and satisfaction. Hoping to hear more on your experiments with that one.
I love the insubstantial quality of a well made meringue. Yum!
If a more trustworthy meringue interests you, try adding sugar syrup to the eggs instead of granulated sugar. Gail Gand's recipe at the link below instructs how.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_13206,00.html
The cake above was definitely torched, but nothing beats properly oven-baked meringue so for something this spectacular I'd probably risk it. And mine's electric!
Cindy Pawlcyn's Mustards Grill in Napa has THE BEST lemon-lime meringue pie. What makes it so fabulous is that she substitutes half of the white sugar in a normal meringue with brown sugar. It's unbeatable!
So, I am attempting the cake as well this weekend, just got started on the recipe in fact.
Anyone else notice that the first step in the "flourless" Lemon-Almond Cake is to butter and flour the cake pan. Not exactly the most kosher of recipes for Passover.
So, the results of the my cake were a big "eh."
My two test subjects said it tasted like a typical flourless cake. Probably won't put the effort forward to make it again... Off to try another recipe (A Chocolate Croissant Bread Pudding) not kosher, but I can only imagine it tastes better
Use potato starch for "flouring" a cake pan. Also, I have a flourless cake recipe that does call for 1 T of flour and I use potato starch during Passover.