Editor's Note: Cool Plates is a new feature that showcases dishes from across the country to help inspire chefs’ creativity.
The dessert special for Valentine’s Day is pastry chef Jansen Chan’s interpretation of the Scandinavian princess cake and the British groom’s cake.
The princess cake is traditionally a sponge cake flavored with kirschwasser and topped with custard, whipped cream and marzipan, all formed into a dome and colored green with food dye.
Chan’s version is an almond cake, sliced, staggered and held together with pastry cream. It’s accompanied by a raspberry sorbet on top of a kirsch gelée. It’s garnished with a green ring of spun sugar.
A groom’s cake is generally dark and chocolaty. Chan’s is two cubes of warm devil’s food cake, to which the trained architect gives structure by sliding in a biscotti-like, inch-thick baked chip made from the same dough as the cake.
It is accompanied by white chocolate ganache and a dark chocolate “sorbet” made with milk, cocoa powder, sugar and dark chocolate.
The dessert is garnished with dots of chocolate sauce.
A diagram of the dessert:
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