- Hey, I'm John Kanell. Today on "Preppy Kitchen", we're making a delicious
stone fruit berry dacquoise. So let's get started. First off, set your oven to
225 so it's nice and warm. And in the food processor, I'm adding one cup or 96 grams of blanched or slivered almonds. If you don't wanna do this step, you could just use almond flour. When you use a food processor, oh my gosh, you get like nice little crunchy bits and I just love the texture it adds. Okay, pulse this up until
they're nice and finely ground. There we go. This is finely ground. But compared to almond flour, we have a play of different sized pieces that's gonna crunch in your mouth and pair perfectly with the meringue. If you haven't had a
dacquoise, it is amazing. Imagine layers of crunchy meringue, but a dacquoise either has
crunchy little almond pieces or little hazel nut pieces in there. And normally it's layered
with whipped cream. You can have some berries in there. And today, this one has meringue layers, French buttercream filled with fruit, more meringue, more French
buttercream, more berries, and it's all topped with
a cloud of whipped cream. It's so lovely. Where has this dessert been all my life? This step's done. We're gonna grab our mixer out right now and make our meringue. This step might seem
almost too simple to show, but it is crucial. So here's the deal, crack your egg. We're going to unlock the magic inside. I want the yolks for
the French buttercream. French buttercream is basically
like a pipeable custard. It's the most amazing
thing you've ever had. It's one of my favorite things on earth. In the meantime, we need
these whites for the meringue. So one white at a time I'm adding them in. This way, if a yolk breaks, which happens, then it's not gonna be a big deal. And I can definitely
see any pieces of shell that get caught in here. And using a nice little conveyor belt. Some people like have little gadgets. I like using my hands to
separate the yolks out because my fingers are soft and it's not going to break the yolk. This goes there, this goes there. So we're not wasting any of these yolks. They're gonna make the most
amazing French buttercream. This recipe's from the
summer chapter of my book. I wanted to create a
delicious light recipe that's kind of refreshing and beautiful that celebrates the flavors of the season. And for me that means lots
of stone fruit and berries. Kind of get them all
year round most places, but they're not the same as
a summer peach, for example. So while they're around, celebrate them, use them and make delicious things. One more egg. Okay, if you have a copy of the book, open up to page 284 and bake along. Six egg whites in the bowl. I'm gonna add a quarter
teaspoon of cream of tartar. This is an acid derived
from the wine-making process and it's going to stabilize our meringue. If you don't have this, I would go with quarter teaspoon of just like a white
vinegar or even lemon juice. To give some balance in this meringue, I'm going to use just under
half a teaspoon, three eighths, so just like a very stingy
half teaspoon of fine sea salt. In you go. Now it's time to whip this up. And at the ready, you should have a cup of super fine or caster sugar. This has a finer grain size and it's gonna mix in really well. If you only have granulated sugar at home, I would pulse it in your food processor just to break it up or go to the store and
get some super fine sugar. It makes a big difference. And that's 200 grams. Have a tablespoon ready because we're gonna add in the
sugar bit by bit very slowly. Work on medium, let the
eggs get nice and frothy and like break up those whites a bit and then we'll start adding the sugar in. This is the step where your
meringue can be glossy, marshmallowy and amazing or kind of like gritty
and just not super puffy. You want to add the sugar slow. My whites are frothed up. Start adding your sugar in
casually, leisurely pace. Little cascade or a drizzle of sugar. And if you're like, huh, this
seems like a lot of work, I don't know if I wanna do this, one, it's totally worth it,
this is gonna change your life, but two, you can stage this out. I could make these
meringues the day before. They could just hang out in the oven nice and dry, cooling down. And then you make the French buttercream like even two days ahead. So you can make this at different days and then you assemble
it right before serving. And the assembly's actually really fun. Last the sugar goes in. Your mixer's gonna run for
maybe eight minutes or so. It kind of depends on how fast it is. Medium is not the same
for every single mixer. So running around medium, medium high, about eight minutes or until
you have stiff, glossy peaks. I wanna show you where we're at right now. I just finished drizzling the sugar in and I have these kind of
like marshmallow fluff that was melted. And that looks great. It has a nice glossy texture because I added the sugar in so slowly. But you know what, it needs
to whip for a lot longer. So we're gonna whip this,
let it get nice and stiff and I'll show you what that looks like. While this is mixing up, grab
two rimmed baking sheets, two pieces of parchment paper and an eight-inch circle and a pencil. That's your assignment. Today's video is sponsored by Mr Black Cold Brew Coffee Liqueur. It's the perfect ingredient to make a delicious
refreshing espresso martini. My dacquoise cake is gonna
come together in no time. The finishing touch for this
wonderful outdoor brunch is gonna be a round of espresso martinis. I'm gonna make a big batch.
It's gonna be so good. First off, grab a cocktail shaker. I'm gonna fill it with a
couple handfuls of ice. And now for some big bold coffee flavor, I'm using one and a half ounces of Mr Black Cold Brew Coffee Liqueur. When I tried this, I was so
blown away by the coffee flavor. They use 100% Arabica beans. It's specialty coffee grade
and they cold brew it. And when you do that, it's
gonna give you less bitterness, a big coffee flavor, and it'll
be overall nice and smooth. We also need half an ounce of vodka. I'm using some Ketel One. Right into your shaker. I brewed some fresh
espresso. I want one ounce. Pop the top on, and now the
only thing you have to do is give it a hard shake. Pop your strainer on. Pour
that into your coupe glass. Give it just a second so the head builds and it'll support a few
dainty little coffee beans right on top. Just like that your espresso
martini is ready to enjoy. By the way, Mr Black is
available across the U.S. I've added a link in the
description box below so you can find out where to get a bottle and make your own delicious cocktail. Cheers. And now let's
get back to the recipe. It's very handy if you have
an eight-inch cake pan. One sheet will have two circles. Make sure you flop it over so that we don't have any
graphite in our dessert. Oh, you've gotta see this. You can tell first of all that
it's getting to that point because the meringue is
gonna be kind of stuck inside of the whisk. That's gorgeous. It's
like a little mountain. So it's a very stiff marshmallowy peak. You can feel how thick
it is by the resistance when you pop the whisk back in. It's crazy. This is a beautiful French meringue. We are going to add just a
little bit of almond extract to kind of like celebrate almonds because we're adding those
into the meringue as well. If you do not like almond
extract for some reason, you can use vanilla,
but I really enjoy it. You just can't use too
much because it's strong. Perfect. Just a few seconds to stir it in. Now we have our delicious meringue. We have our amazing almonds. We're gonna add half of the
almonds in and fold them in. So fold them in two batches. I'm gonna add about half of
the almonds right on top. Sprinkle sprinkle. So now we're gonna fold it in. So just fold that in. Be gentle. Oh my gosh, this is actually
like a giant marshmallow. It's so strong. Some people think, and it's like a very
specific set of people because not that many people do this, but some people think that Italian meringue or Swiss meringue are like completely different
from a French meringue. When in fact the end
result of what you get, like a silky, strong, beautiful
meringue can be the same as long as you make
French meringue correctly. Gonna fold the remaining almond pieces in. Let's add the rest of the almonds. Oh my gosh, I am so excited
because I love meringue. It's so like crunchy and light. By the way if you're like,
ugh, I don't like almonds, you can use hazelnuts in this as well. It'd be the same process. Just make sure they're nice
and processed, finely ground, and then fold them in. And you don't have to use almond extract, you could use vanilla or hazel nut extract if you can find it. Look at that. Look at that stiff peak. It still has the peaks. That
was some nice folding there. Okay, so now we're gonna
fill our piping bag up. Don't try and get this
all into one piping bag. Do it in a couple batches
because it's such a nightmare if you overfill a piping bag. Snip about an inch off
of the piping bag's tip. I get up at approximately 5:08 every day so I can have the kids' lunch all ready and make breakfast and stuff,
which I actually enjoy. I like waking up early, but sometimes I'm not the most cogent for these YouTube videos. So now it's time to pipe our discs. Don't worry about them looking perfect, you're gonna smooth the tops out. And this isn't like a fancy piped disc, it's just a plain rustic disc meringue. I'm gonna hold the paper. If you don't wanna do that, you could add little dollops
of meringue underneath as glue. I'm gonna make my discs and eyeball it. And if there's any extra, I'll
just kind of pipe it on top so they're roughly the same height. That one's done. Now
it's time for these guys. Discs are piped. There's just a little bit extra here, so I'm gonna add that to my first one because it seems a bit
flatter than the rest. Get a little spatula and we're
just gonna smooth the tops just so they're nice and even. Look at those beautiful almonds in here. It's like, oh my gosh, I'm
so excited by this dessert. These look great. It's time to pop these into the oven 225 for two to two and a half hours or until the center's dry to the touch. Then they stay in the oven
to continue drying out with the door closed for at least three hours up to overnight. In you go. Grab a medium pot, fill it
with about two inches of water and we're gonna bring this to a boil over medium high to high heat. There we go. While our meringue is baking,
we're gonna make this silky, amazing custard-like French buttercream. It's a couple simple ingredients starting with 180 grams
or three quarters of a cup plus two tablespoons of granulated sugar. I also want eight egg yolks. That's the six I have
from before plus two more. And in the book I have half
of a scraped vanilla bean. You could use two teaspoons
of vanilla bean paste. I ran out of both, so I'm gonna use some
of my homemade vanilla. Two teaspoons as well. My scale is done. I'm gonna give this a whisk
just so it comes together. You can see the color is amazing. I love the color of French buttercream. Anyways, this is nice and whisked up, but I want you to take a look. The color's great, but it's very runny, and if I take a little bit
between my fingers, super grainy. All I feel are tons of
little sugar grains. That's not cool. So we're gonna cook this,
have a spatula handy. We're gonna be stirring,
stirring, stirring, and if you have a thermometer,
bring that along too. Reduce to a simmer. So I'm stirring, I have
my little thermometer out, and I'm in the eighties right
now, so I've got a ways to go. You should be at like 160,
maybe a little bit less. You just wanna keep it moving, because anything that settles has the potential for like
congealing and becoming hard. And this should be silky
smooth, not like rubbery. While I have your attention, you'll want a cup plus five tablespoons that's just under 300
grams of nice soft butter. If you don't have the European style, you can use regular butter. It will definitely work. This just has like a lovely flavor and it's higher in butterfat. And the color's nice too,
so it'll be extra yellow. In this dessert we have those
crunchy light meringue discs. And by the way, when they're in the oven, because yours are probably
in the oven right now, if you're baking along with me, they're gonna look a little gnarly. This is not like a pavlova or some other piped
dessert from Instagram. This is a delicious dessert. It'll look nice in the assembly, but those discs are gonna look very rustic and they will deflate a bit. So don't worry about that if it happens. I'm at 160. You can see it's silky smooth. And look at that, it is like glossy. You can't see any sugar anymore, so it's cooked through, the sugar's gone, it's time to pop it onto your mixture with the whisk attachment. Don't waste any of this yolk
mixture. It's all precious. Now, just like in other kinds of meringue-based buttercreams, we're gonna mix this on
medium to medium high until it's stiff, it has a lot
more body, and it's not hot. It's 160 degrees. We want it to be in the
eighties to seventies. So you want it to be like just a little bit warm to the touch to room temperature. So let it mix away. It'll be
about seven or 10 minutes. While this mixes, just make sure you have all
of your butter accounted for and it's soft at room temperature. You don't want ice-cold pieces of butter. My mixture is still a bit warm, but I wanna show you the
amazing transformation that came just from whipping it. So you have a much thicker,
really light yellow colored almost marshmallowy mixture. And it's really on its way. It's not gonna get much thicker than that, but it needs to cool down a bit more. So keep whipping. And when it's more room temperature-y, it's time for the butter. My egg yolks are not hot anymore. They're nice and room temperature,
they're nice and stiff, and most importantly, they're
gathering around the beater. That's the final cue that lets me know it's ready for butter. Keep your mixer on medium and now we're gonna add the
butter one tablespoon at a time. You don't wanna overwhelm
the mixture with butter, because while butter is delicious, it's gonna turn this into a soup. So just be prepared for that. It's not gonna be like, oh,
it's a magical, amazing thing. It's gonna look horrible to begin with and then it'll come together
just at the very end. So the important thing is
to keep adding the butter and don't stop. It's not gonna fix itself
until all the butter is gone. Just let the butter disappear
before you add the next piece. If you're not using
salted butter like I am, go ahead and just add in a
quarter teaspoon right now, give it a taste, and then you can keep adding a little bit, like a sprinkle at a time just until it has the right balance. I'm towards the end of my butter addition and I wanna show you,
it's coming together. This is so nice. My little butter baby. So now it's starting to
look like a buttercream. Up until this point, it's
been a beautiful yellow soup. So just have faith and
it'll come together. My final piece of butter is going in. As soon as that's nicely mixed in, you can scrape the bowl
down once if you want, and then it's time to pop
this into a piping bag fitted with an open star tip or anything you think is
gonna be really pretty. Just has to be like the right size. Oh my gosh, look at this. Amazing. It's so good it should be a crime. A crime, I tell you, a French crime. I have a big piping bag
fitted with a star tip. It's an 846, but use your favorite. And we're gonna transfer this silky, soft mixture into the fridge and it's just gonna chill and hangout. This is a softer buttercream
than you might be used to, and you can pipe it cold so it'll make it much easier to assemble. Take a lot of stress out and you can make this in
advance and not worry about it. This with the crunchy meringue and those amazing fruits all throughout with little whipped cream on top, it's gonna be heaven,
it's gonna be amazing. When I was choosing recipes for the book, I wanted to have things
that celebrated the season. So this is a summery, light, amazing recipe with all those fruits. But I also just wanted to
have like my favorite things. This recipe has everything
I love on one platter and it's so good. I'm really excited to share this with you. This goes into the fridge and our next step is
to assemble everything. Our discs are out of the
oven, they're completely dry, and I love the swirls on the bottom even though no one's gonna see that. We can appreciate it for a moment. Grab a flat cake plate. If it's too concave, your
dacquoise will shatter when you try and cut it,
which is just annoying. And as you can see, I have an
assortment of stone fruits. You really only need like one peach, one plum, a plumcot, a nectarine. You can get like maybe
two to four stone fruits depending on the size. And you know, a cup or so of berries. Get whatever is best in
season at the moment, like you go to the market. If it's amazing plums,
use those in this dessert. I found a nice assortment at my market so I kind of went crazy. The rest will be for my kids' snacks and for snacking on myself. You find whatever is best at the market and use it in this dessert. If the peaches aren't
great, go with the apricots. If the apricots are
mealy, nectarines it is. They'll all be delicious. I've washed, pitted and sliced
a good number of stone fruit. The number's dwindling
because I keep snacking. I'm gonna add about a teaspoon
of fresh lemon juice on top. This adds a little bit of zing
and also prevents browning. So let's give it a toss. Lovely. Now it's time to assemble. Let's say you made your French
buttercream way in advance and it's been in the fridge. It's gonna come out hard as a rock. Don't panic, just pop it into a bowl. You can cut it to pieces
if it's a actual log and then mix, mix, mix,
it'll wake back up. It's just gonna take a few minutes, but mixing it is going
to bring it back to life and soften the butter. I mention this because it happened to me. Sometimes you just get busy and all of a sudden you're
like, oh, it's been many hours and that has been chilling
in the fridge for too long. Now it's time for the fun part. We are going to pipe up a storm. Cover your discs completely in
little stars of buttercream. It's gonna be two things:
delicious and structural. It'll help hold the cake together and it's gonna be a custardy amazing bite. Look how beautiful and glossy that is. A few minutes ago it was
rock hard, so this works. Now we're gonna scatter
some berries over the top. You be strategic and
scatter some at the edge so they're visible. Now we're gonna add some
fruit right into the middle. Try and get the pretty parts poking out. That looks nice. Now we're just gonna
add the next layer on. Plop. Snapping is okay, don't worry about it. When you cut this, it's gonna
be a bit of a train wreck, I'm not gonna lie. It's not gonna have
beautiful, amazing cuts, but the taste is beyond
delicious, so go with the flow. Continue adding dollops. All right, finish this off and make sure to leave some
space for the fruit to hang out. Add the final layer on. Ooh. So pretty. Adding the final row of dollops. And by the way, if your
buttercream gets too warm, just pop it right back into
the fridge for a few minutes and it'll be right as rain. Using all the buttercream. Any last bit can go right in the middle. Now we're gonna spoon on a
heaping amount of whipped cream. This was a cup of cold heavy cream with two tablespoons of powdered sugar, and you can add vanilla or
whatever flavoring you'd like. This color doesn't even
look real. It's so crazy. Give it a couple swoops and your stone fruit
dacquoise is ready to enjoy. I'm so proud of cutting this piece. Crisp meringue, beautiful
silky French buttercream with all that fruit and a
ton of whipped cream on top. The nuts toasting the meringue
are just crunchy perfection with that silky custard-like buttercream, mound of whipped cream on top of that and all of that bright, amazing fruit. I hope you get a chance to make this delicious
recipe from my book. And if you like this video,
check out my book playlist.
