Egyptian Cake

I have a friend who calls the Egyptian cake, "sand cake". It's not the most flattering description for the Egyptian Cake, but it's not wrong either, the texture of the whipped cream with walnuts and caramelized sugar can be compared to sand.

Now that I think about it, the description above is more likely to convince you NOT to make the cake, so I'd better move quickly to the recipe and pictures (video)!

For a cake with a diameter of 20 cm, approximately 1.7 kg

For the vanilla pastry cream:

• 6 bc Egg Yolk

• 100 g Sugar

•  20 g Corn Starch

• 1 bc Vanilla Essence (or some vanilla)

Put them in a pot and mix using a whisk,

• 225 g Milk

 Add the heated milk over the mixture of yolks, put the pot on medium heat, stirring continuously until the cream boils and thickens.

•  200 g Cold Butter

 Add over the cream, mixing until integrated. Remove the cream in a bowl, cover with cling film and leave to cool.

For the sponges:

We need 6 sponges with a diameter of 20 cm. Below I’ll give you the quantities for a 20 cm sponge or for a 60x40 cm sheet, from which you can cut 6 sponges. For other sizes, use the recipe calculator!

For a 20 cm sponge:

• 55 g Egg White

• 25 g Sugar

• 5 g Flour

• 25 g Ground Walnuts

Whip the egg white and when it starts to be airy, add the sugar slowly until you get a stable meringue. Integrate the walnut mixed with the flour and spread the batter in a 20cm diameter form that you bake at 180 C for 20 - 25 minutes.

For a 60x40 cm sheet :

• 412 g Egg White

• 187 g Sugar

• 38 g Flour

• 187 g Ground Walnuts

Whip the egg white and when it starts to be airy, add the sugar slowly until you get a stable meringue. Integrate the walnut mixed with flour and spread the top in a 60x40 cm pan and bake at 180 C for 20 - 25 minutes.

After the sheet has cooled, cut out 6 pc of 20cm diameter sponges.

For the caramelized sugar and whipped-cream ..cream:

• 133 g Sugar

• 105 g Walnuts

• 200 g Cream

Melt the sugar in a pot and remove it on a baking paper to cool. Roast the walnuts in the oven at 150 C for about 10 minutes and cool them.

Using a food processor, process the caramelized sugar and walnuts until they become quite fine, then add them to the whipped cream (foamed quite hard).

For decorating:

• 250 g Cream

Assemble the cake using approximately 120g of vanilla cream and 85g of whipped cream with caramelized sugar and walnuts on each layer. After a few hours in the fridge, cover the cake using the whipped cream (do not add sugar, the cake is sweet enough) and dress the side with ground walnut.