Miss Marzipan!

Preparation steps

• Dark Biscuit: Melt the butter over low heat. Allow to cool. Mix butter with sugar, add egg yolks one by one, mix well. Add the chocolate (also melted and slightly chilled) and mix well again. Whisk the egg whites into a stiff batter in a separate bowl and lightly add to the previous mixture. Mix the flour with the baking powder and lightly sift into the mixture (I do this gradually in a slightly larger tea strainer). Grease a 24 cm diameter cake tin with butter. Sprinkle with flour, remove the excess and pour the mixture into it. Bake in a preheated oven for about an hour at 160-180 C.
• Yellow biscuit: Whisk the egg whites, gradually add sugar and oil. Add flour with powder and finally milk. Mix the flour and milk by hand, not with a mixer. Pour into a buttered and floured mold of the same diameter. Bake for 15-30 minutes in a preheated oven. Do not overcook it, ie dry it out. For the measure I use a plastic cup of yogurt, 1 dcl is half a cup and 0.5 dcl is a quarter cup.
• Marcpan: Crush raw marzipan in a bowl, add powdered sugar and ground almonds. Whisk the egg whites into the solid snow and add to the mixture. Knead well with your hands. If necessary, add powdered sugar.
• Divide the marzipan mixture into three parts.
• Roll out each piece on baking paper on which you have outlined the bottom of the cake tin (the same mold in which you bake the biscuit). Sprinkle with powdered sugar if necessary. I have 3 sheets with a drawn circle, as I develop so I put one on top of the other and leave the sides covered with another paper so that it does not dry out. I shake these papers off the sugar and leave for another time, no need to throw them away.
• Cream: Mix eggs with sugar and cook on steam or in a pot with a thick bottom, until you get a thick cream. For me it is about 20-30 minutes. (I described the procedure in detail and posted pictures in the recipe for Walnut Cake). Put the diced butter in the hot cream and stir to melt. add rum sugar or real rum. Mix the cream to lighten, at least 5 minutes. Stack the cake immediately, do not wait for the cream to cool.
• Cake stacking procedure: Cut the dark biscuit into two sheets.
• I usually do it with a thread. Shallowly cut with a knife around the entire biscuit, wrap the thread around that groove and lightly tie a knot. That's the simplest thing for me.
• These are prepared biscuits for two cakes. We wore the big one to the baptism, my husband was the godfather to one boy, and we had the little one the day before on his birthday. The small version was scaled down from the big one and was just fine. I like those little cakes that Rudolph makes in his shows, and we’d have a lot of two big ones in two days.
• Soak the bottom layer of dark crust well with the topping (boil water with sugar, cool and add the other ingredients). And when you think that a little more is enough, because the dark crusts are compact and should be well watered, the more the better.
• Heat the jam to boiling and coat the biscuit in a thin layer.
• Put the first sheet of marzipan on the hot jam and press with your hands to stick.
• Spread 1/4 of the cream over the marzipan.
• Put a yellow biscuit on the cream, pour the topping over it (less than a dark biscuit), coat it with hot jam in a thin layer (if necessary, heat it again because it spreads better when it is hot and the marzipan sticks to it better). Glue another sheet of marzipan on the jam. Spread a quarter of the cream over it again.
• Put another sheet of dark crust on the cream, soak it well again (but very well). Coat with jam, put a third sheet of marzipan on it.
• Coat the whole cake with the remaining cream, on top and on the sides. I haven't tried it but I think this cake could be nicely decorated with fondant because it's firm and cuts nicely.
• For the glaze: Melt the milk and sugar to melt the sugar crystals. Add the chocolate and melt gently so it doesn’t boil. Add oil and margarine mix everything without heating. Cool slightly and add orange extract or juice (or liqueur or similar). Glaze the whole cake.
• For decoration, I made chocolate decorations, fences and bubbles for the first time. It didn’t quite turn out the way I envisioned (this should be practiced, repetition is the mother of knowledge! It always has!) But it didn’t turn out badly.
• I tried to make baskets, wrapped small bowls in cling film and sprinkled them with dark, milk and white chocolate.
• Honestly, I'm not happy with the decoration, but here it is ... I usually decorate it minimally with cream or whipped cream, possibly chocolate whipped cream and decorate with almonds in chocolate (dragees), which we adore as much as marzipan. This time I put them in a chocolate basket on a big cake.
• The small cake was more simply decorated.
• Cross section of a small cake.
• A piece of small cake. This cake is really rich in flavors (marzipan, almonds, oranges, dark chocolate, rum ...) so I think such a small piece is quite enough.
• I also managed to take a cross-section of a large cake.