Couple of month ago I featured a Maracaibo & Hazelnut Darquoise Almond Cake for SugarHead’s first one month Birthday. Since this cake is our hotels complementary cake and I had to prepare a photo shoot for my monthly SLIM recipe contribution I thought I will post some of the pictures as well.

L and myself spend some considerable time to go through each step by preparing the Almond chocolate sponge, the Hazelnut Darquoise, the mousse and the finishing of the cake as it would be served to a child Birthday in our restaurants.

After preparing the sponge and the Darquoise coffee syrup is sprinkled onto the sponge to enhance the already moist sponge. Maracaibo Chocolate mousse is then poured halfway and a disk of delicate Hazelnut Darquoise placed into the middle of the cake. Finally the rest of the mousse is filled into the cake ring.

On top the cake is a small ring of mousse piped for later in the final presentation of the cake. After a couple hours in the blast freezer the cake rings are removed and the entire cake sprayed with dark-bitter chocolate.

The finishing is done with some ganach and fresh berries. As decoration chocolate curves and 24 carat gold leaf.

The main focus about food is color; people are attracted to fresh and colorful food. In pastry it is even more of importance to present food appealing to the eye. Let’s face it; after eating from the cold and hot buffet one needs to find place for some sweets and convince the body that a extra portion of sugar-rush will not do any harm.

We just introduced three new menus in our Dunes Cafe, changing every day in rotation and hopefully attract more SugarHeads!

Dunes Cafe, Shangri-La Dubai, Sheikh Zayeed road, Dubai, UAE

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