August 5, 2014
Rob
0

Recipe: Vacherin with ice cream and sorbet

Summer is the perfect season to enjoy fresh desserts. Or even better, frozen desserts!

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This time I decided to put together some basic preparations into one single cake: the result is a Vacherin, a famous meringue-based cake filled with ice cream or sorbet and covered with Chantilly cream.

Apparently the name Vacherin comes from a French cheese that looks like this cake, but luckily enough, the taste has nothing to do with it!

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I made the vanilla ice cream and strawberry sorbet myself for the filling, but you can choose and buy your favourite flavours. I would recommend trying to find a balance, though, between sweetness and tartness, creaminess and lightness.

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The meringue is very easy to make: the hardest part for me, though, was covering the cake with Chantilly cream. This cream needs to be very cold and my kitchen in summer is all but cold! I had to be very quick (and I covered small glitches with the meringue sticks as decoration on the top! What a cheater!) 🙂

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Vacherin (Frozen meringue cake)

Print recipe

Ingredients

50gGranulated sugar
1 teaspoonVanilla extract

Meringue

90gEgg whites (room temperature)
90gGranulated sugar
90gPowdered sugar

Filling

300gVanilla ice cream
300gStrawberry sorbet (or any other ice cream you want!)

Chantilly cream

250mlHeavy cream (cold, min. 30% fat)

Directions

Meringue

1
Start whipping the room-temperature egg whites at medium speed with 20g of sugar
2
Gradually add the remaining granulated sugar when the egg whites start foaming
3
Gently fold the powdered sugar with a spatula into the finished meringue
4
On parchment-lined pan, pipe the meringue with a large plain tip into the shape of two equal rounds (tip: draw the circles using a cake round on the back of the parchment paper)
5
On another parchment-lined pan, pipe long meringue strips with a small plain tip. Method: keep the piping bag a few cm above the pan; press the bag to start piping then move it on a straight line over the pan
6
Bake the two pans at 100°C for at least two hours with oven door slightly open. The baked meringues should be white and hard.
7
Remove the pans from the oven: break the stripes into 2-3cm sticks with your hands and leave the rounds to cool down at room temperature.

Filling

8
Place the first meringue round in a cake ring (lined with a PVC stripe, if you have it). You can use the cake ring to trim the edge of the rounds.
9
Scoop the vanilla ice cream on the meringue round then level it with a spoon
10
Scoop the strawberry sorbet and level it with a spoon
11
Place the second meringue round, flat side facing upwards. Freeze for at least one hour.

Chantilly cream

12
Whip the cold, heavy cream to soft peaks on medium speed with the vanilla and sugar

Decoration

13
Take out the cake of the freezer and remove the ring (you might have to wait a while, or you can speed up the process by flaming the edge with a propane torch for pastry!)
14
Pour a big amount of whipped cream on the top of the cake. Spread it using an offset spatula: perform small movements in all directions and always keep the spatula slightly inclined so that only its bottom side is in contact with the cream
15
Once you finished levelling the top, add some more cream and spread it again in the same way, this time pushing it on the sides of the cake. You can leave it with a rough look, or smooth it out using the spatula with wider movements (or a dough cutter for the side). This whole thing is sooo much easier if you have a cake turntable, by the way!
16
Place the meringue sticks on the top of the cake and decorate with a (used and) dried vanilla bean and half strawberry.

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