Frankopan cake

Preparation steps

• For 4 crusts we need about 1 kg of puff pastry. You can make puff pastry at home or buy it. I would recommend you to make homemade puff pastry for this cake because it is too soft and crispy to buy, so it is better if you use the one made at home, which will still be very puffy but firmer.
• Divide the dough into 4 parts of 250 g each and roll out to a size of 30x30 cm. While stretching one crust, always keep the others in the refrigerator.
• We need to prepare about 200 g of almonds for the filling. Almonds should first be baked at 180 degrees for about 5-10 minutes, depending on the oven. When the almonds are roasted and cooled we need to chop them.
• It is also necessary to prepare about 100 g of raisins soaked in about 50 ml of rum, just to cover them. The raisins will not absorb all this rum and we will not add the rest of the rum to the filling, but we will squeeze the raisins well and cut or grind them in a mixer with a knife.
• Phil: All the recipes for this cake I’ve seen so far have too little fillet in my opinion. I decided to make a filling with 1 and a half of the ingredients because it seemed better that way. Of course, this differs from the original recipe, which uses smaller amounts of ingredients.
• Whisk well 9 egg yolks with 220 g of sugar. You need to stir for 3 to 4 minutes for the egg yolks and sugar to froth.
• Put about 300 ml of water in a small pot to boil at the lowest strength because your filling should be cooked gradually without heating up abruptly. Place the bowl with the egg yolks on the pan and steam the filling for some 20 to 30 minutes, until the egg yolks are nicely cooked. Towards the end, add about 4 tablespoons or 40 g of thinned cornstarch and cook for another 3 minutes. Add the cornstarch a little as in the video and with the help of a strainer so that you don't have lumps left in the filling. Remove the filling from the steam and allow to cool with stirring every minute. If you do not mix, a crust will form on the surface.
• When the filling has cooled, stir in about 150 g of butter and gradually add the egg yolk filling to the butter. Mix well.
• Now we need our spices, about 3 to 4 grams of nutmeg, grated rind of a whole small lemon, about 3 grams of cinnamon powder. Mix all these ingredients nicely into the filling.
• Whip 500 g of whipping cream. When you have whipped the whipped cream, add it gradually with a spoon to the filling and mix. Do not mix the filling with the mixer from now on. This will allow the filling to remain foamy.
• We will now add 200 g of roasted chopped almonds and raisins which we squeezed well from the rum and ground. You can also put whole raisins, but then it will be harder for you to cut the cake and they will often stand in your way to get a nice and perfectly cut piece of cake. Mix everything lightly together.
• We will fill the cake in a crust baking mold, so we have to cut the crust to that size. When we cut the crust, we start filling. Lightly place the first crust on a cake plate and in a mold. Add one-third of the filling and flatten nicely. Put another crust and so continue with three crusts. We do not spread the filling on the back crust, but we will decorate it with whipped cream. This is how the cake looks very high, but it will shrink from the weight of the filling on the crusts of puff pastry. I advise you to decorate the cake with whipped cream only 3 hours after you have filled the cake, because it will peel off a bit and if you coat it with whipped cream now, it will probably crack a little after the cake settles. Leave the cake in the fridge for 3 hours.
• Take about 500 g of peaches from the compote and squeeze them well. Cut the peaches into several pieces and set aside.
• Whip 500 g of whipped cream again and cover the cake with whipped cream. You don't have to try to keep the whipped cream perfectly flat, because the whole cake will later be covered with peaches and almonds.
• Garnish as desired and arrange the peaches on top. Garnish with about 50 g of roasted chopped almonds.
• These measures are good to get a cake of nice firmness that doesn’t come apart when you cut it. The filling should not be soft or move as you cut the cake.