Uruguayan · Dessert
Chajá
- Advanced
- 50 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a warm current of chile, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- 4 large eggs, for the sponge
- 120 g caster sugar, for the sponge
- 120 g plain flour
- 90 g egg white, about 3 whites
- 180 g caster sugar, for the meringue
- 600 ml double cream, cold
- 300 g dulce de leche
- 1 tin (400 g) peaches in syrup, drained and diced, the syrup kept
- 40 ml peach syrup from the tin
- 20 ml brandy
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Whipping a meringueFolding: keeping the air in
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Whisk the whole eggs and sugar over a pan of hot water to blood heat, then off the heat to the ribbon stage, fold in the sifted flour in three goes, and bake in a lined 20 cm tin at 180C (350F) for 25 minutes to 30 minutes. 25 min
- Whip the whites to soft peak, rain in the meringue sugar, beat to a stiff glossy peak, spread it 5 mm thick on a lined tray and dry at 90C (194F) for 3 hours, until a broken edge snaps dry right through with no chew at the centre, then leave it in the switched off oven to cool. 180 min
- Split the cooled sponge into three and brush each cut face with the peach syrup mixed with the brandy.
- Whip the cream to soft peak only, then layer sponge, cream, diced peach and spoonfuls of dulce de leche twice over, finishing with sponge.
- Mask the whole cake in the last of the cream and press broken meringue over every surface until none of it shows. Build it the day you eat it, chill it as soon as it is masked, and keep it in the fridge until 30 minutes before serving. 30 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Folding: keeping the air in 34 recipes
- The air was actually built first and it shows: whatever was creamed or whipped has changed colour and grown in volume, pale and light rather than dense.
- The two mixtures were brought closer before being combined: a little of the light one worked into the heavy one first, so the rest is not beaten flat trying to move it.
- Folded and not stirred: a broad implement down through the middle, across the base, up and over, with the bowl turned between strokes.
- Stopped the moment the streaks disappear. It is still visibly aerated and holds its shape briefly when the spoon lifts away.
- Into the tin and into the oven straight away: a batter left standing on the bench gives back the air it was built for.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred until it looked perfectly smooth. Every stroke past the point where the streaks vanish knocks out air that cannot be put back, so the bake comes out dense and short of the tin, and often wet through the middle where there was no structure to hold it.
Whipping a meringue 40 recipes
- Bowl and whisk are clean and dry with no trace of fat or yolk. Grease prevents the foam outright, and there is no recovering a bowl that had it partway through.
- The sugar went in gradually once the whites were already foaming, rather than all at once at the start.
- No grit: a little rubbed between finger and thumb feels smooth, so the sugar has dissolved into the foam rather than sitting in it.
- Stiff peaks means the tip stands with a slight bow when the whisk lifts, and the bowl can be tipped without the mass moving in it.
- Glossy and smooth rather than chalky or dull, with no liquid gathering underneath it in the bowl.
Where it goes wrong It was whipped past stiff peaks. A minute beyond glory the protein network tightens and tears, the foam turns grainy and matte, water weeps out beneath it, and folding that into anything gives a mixture that collapses on the way to the oven.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Tawny Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry or bourbon
- From the Taps
- Barleywine
- Zero-Proof
- Cold-brew coffee
Caramel echoing caramel: oxidative aging built the same flavors into the glass that the pan built into the plate.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.