Pinocchio cake (Swedish meringue cake)
This cake is light and fresh. The almond studded crispy meringue cake layers are filled with fresh whipped cream and handpicked seasonal fruit or berries. Perfect for a summer celebration sure to impress your guests!
Equipment
- 1 Electric whisk
- 1 baking pan 9x12 inch
- 1 measuring spoons and jugs
- 1 kitchen scale
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 eggs free ranged
- 100 ml sugar + 150 ml sugar caster
- 125 grams butter
- 100 ml milk full fat
- 150 ml flour all purpose
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 teaspoon vanilla essence or extract
- 30 grams almonds sliced
Filling
- 300 ml cream
- berries or fruit of your choice
Garnish
- icing sugar
Instructions
Meringue cake
- Separate the eggs. Whisk egg yolks and sugar until pale and fluffy.
- Add melted butter, milk and vanilla to the egg and sugar mixture and mix well on low speed.
- Mix flour, baking powder and vanilla. Add it to the egg and butter mixture.
- In a separate bowl whisk egg whites on high speed. When soft peaks start to form slowly add 150 ml sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla to the egg whites and whisk until firm stiff peaks.
- Pour the cake batter into a rectangular cake tin or oven tray lined with parchment paper.
- Spread the egg whites out on top of the cake batter.
- Scatter the top of the egg whites with sliced almonds.
- Bake in the oven 175-180 degrees Celsius for 25-30 minutes until it has a nice golden color.
- Let the cake rest for 10 minutes then remove it from the cake tin and on to a wired wrack to cool down. Cut the cake in half straight across to create two equal size meringue cake bases.
Assembling the meringue cake
- Whip the cream and spread half of it on one of the cake halves, scatter a heap of seasonal berries or sliced fruit on top then spread the rest of the cream on top of the fruit or berries.
- Put the other cake half on top. Lightly dust with icing sugar before serving.
Notes
- Instead of making one large rectangular cake to cut in half like I did in this recipe, to create a top and bottom, you can bake two smaller individual cake bases instead to use as a top and bottom layer.
- If you are feeding a large group simply make double the recipe and cook two rectangular cake bases 9x12. Use one as a top layer and one as a bottom.
- I recommend using a serrated knife to cut the cake with. The delicate, crispy meringue texture will crack when cutting but it's easier to cut neat pieces with a serrated knife.
- Use room temperature eggs.
- Whip the egg whites until soft peaks first, then slowly add the sugar, a little bit at the time while beating. Do not add the sugar all at once.
- Make sure the bowl is perfectly clean before whipping the Egg whites.
They will not whip properly unless the bowl is perfectly clean.
