VANILLA DOME 3 RECIPES

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4. Prepare a round 20cm tin by buttering and flouring it thoroughly. Place a disk of parchment at the bottom. Mix the flours and sift them 2 or 3 times.
• Prepare a pan with hot (but not boiling) water (bain-marie) large enough to contain the bowl you will be mixing the batter in, but not touching the water. Break the eggs and the yolk into a large bowl or the bowl of a standing mixer. Place the bowl with eggs in the bain-marie and whisk for a few minutes adding the sugar little by little, with a hand whisk or a hand held mixer until the eggs come to about body temperature. Make sure the eggs do not start to scramble!
• Remove the bowl from the hot bath and beat in a standing mixer with a balloon attachment, or with a hand held mixer, at high speed for 5 minutes, adding the rest of the sugar if you didn’t manage it all at the initial stage. Reduce the speed to medium and beat it further 5 minutes. The eggs should be five times the original volume, completely pale and quite stiff.
• Sieve the flour over the egg mix from high above in two or three goes folding it in very gently each time before sieving in more. Make sure the mix does not deflate. Scoop a couple of heaped spoonfuls of the batter and mix with the warm butter, then fold it all gently back in.
• Pour the batter into the tin and twist it sharply to remove large air bubbles. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the sponge crackles slightly when pressed with a finger and leaves a small indentation. Take out and drop from 20cm height onto a couple of folded tea towels, two or three times. This is the best part, and it works so well it’s amazing – contrary to appearance, it stops the sponge from collapsing and sinking. Turn the tin upside down onto a wooden board lined with a paper towel and leave for 5 minutes. Turn it the right side up, remove from the tin and cool completely on a cake rack. Wrap in cling film or a plastic bag and chill for at least a few hours.
• To make the raspberry filling, place the frozen raspberries, water, sugar and lemon juice in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 15 minutes until the raspberries have broken down.
• Pass the mixture through a sieve to get rid of the pips and return to the pan (you might not bother if you think the seeds are not going to be a problem for anyone, in fact the filling sets better with seeds). Whisk in the corn flour slurry, stir in well and let it bubble for another 5 minutes until it thickens considerably. Transfer it to a bowl and cool completely. Chill in the fridge for at least a couple of hours and best overnight.
• To make the dark chocolate mousse, break the chocolate into small pieces into a bowl and add the icing sugar. In a small pan or in a microwave bring the double cream with the butter to the boil and pour it boiling over the chocolate. Leave to stand for a couple of minutes and then stir it well. Leave to cool completely, then place in the fridge for at least half an hour.
• Whip the chilled chocolate mix with a hand whisk or an electric mixer until it thickens, lightens in colour and has a mousse consistency – don’t over-whip. If that happens, add a spoonful of cream to the mousse and gently whip it in.
• To make the buttercream, beat the butter until pale and fluffy. Still beating, add the icing sugar by a couple of spoonfuls. Add the scraped vanilla seeds and the cream, and whisk it in.
• To assemble the cake, line a 20-23cm bowl with cling film. Slice the genoise horizontally into three layers using a cake slicing wire, a very sharp knife or a cotton thread (make a shallow incision with a sharp knife along the edge, halfway through its height. Take a length of cotton thread and wrap around the cake, fitting it into the incision. Twist the thread as if you wanted to strangle the cake until it cuts through). The middle layer should be really thin, as it’s to go between raspberry and buttercream inside the dome.
• Place one layer, cut side up, into the bowl lined with cling film, pressing gently in. Spread a thin layer of the dark chocolate mousse over it (you might want to take the cake out of the bowl for this exercise and return it again). Chill for half an hour to allow it to set.
• Next, spoon in the raspberry filling – as much or as little as you like, mindful that there should be space left for the buttercream. Place the thin middle genoise layer, trimmed to the right diameter, on top of the raspberry filling.
• Pipe or spoon the buttercream over the previous layer, spreading some onto the edge as well. Finally, place the bottom cake layer to close the dome, cut side in. Press it gently in the middle, to spread the buttercream, and all around the edge to make sure it sticks. Chill in the bowl for an hour or overnight.
• For the final decoration, turn the cake out of the bowl onto a serving tray or cake stand.
• To make the white chocolate ganache, break up the chocolate into pieces as small as possible. Put the cream and butter in a bowl and microwave for 40 seconds until it boils vigorously. Immediately add the chocolate and leave to stand (in the microwave) for a minute or two. Whisk together into smooth ganache. This will be fairly thick ganache so spread it with a palette knife over the dome cake, rather than pour it over.
• Make sure the sides of the cake are covered with ganache, then sprinkle some rose petals over it or decorate according to your taste.
• Chill, trim the edge of the ganache pooled at the bottom of the cake and transfer to a clean serving plate.