Old-fashioned Serano Cake

What’s that, you may ask? Why, it used to be the best-selling dessert in every Greek pattisserie back in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, but fell out of favor in recent years, as most old-fashioned desserts started getting replaced with more modern confections.

The old school version is a light and fluffy torte, loaded with rich chocolate flavor, but it’s italian-meringue based, and I always found it to be too sickly sweet, so I tried to update it a little and tone down the sugary component.

This is what you’ll need:

For the sponge:

• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup cake flour
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 tsp vanilla

In the bowl of your stand mixer, whisk the eggs, vanilla and sugar on high speed until the mixture doubles is size and becomes very pale and creamy. Sift in the cocoa and flour and fold in with a spatula, taking care not to knock all the air out. Bake in 3 9-inch round pans, lined with parchment paper, for about 8-10 minutes in a 180C/350F oven, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the sponge comes out clean.

Allow the cakes to cool completely.

For the syrup:

• 3/4 cup water
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp brandy

Place all the ingedients in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Let it simmer for 2 minutes and take it off the heat, then allow your syrup to cool completely. I find that placing it in a squeezy-bottle is quicker, easier and less messy than using a pastry brush.

For the mousse:

First, you need to whipe up a batch of italian meringue, for which you’ll need:

• 4 egg whites
• 1/4 cup water
• 200 gr. sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

Start by placing your eggs whites into the bowl of your mixer. In a small saucepan, bring the sugar and water to a boil. While the sugar syrup is heating up, start beating your eggs whites. You’ll need to monitor your syrup temperature with a candy thermometer. As soon as the eggs whites are nice and frothy and your syrup reaches 115 C / 240 F, slowly and carefully drizzle in your syrup, with the mixer working on medium speed. Continue beating until the sides of the bowl are cool to the touch, 5-7 minutes, depending on the power of your mixer. Finally, drizzle in the vanilla, and you have italian meringue.

To turn your italian meringue into a fluffy chocolate mousse, you’ll just need:

• 300 gr. melted chocolate
• 300 ml heavy cream

There are plenty of ways to do this – you can whip the heavy cream to soft peaks and fold in your melted chocolate, then fold in the meringue; you can fold the meringue into the chocolate in batches, then fold in the whipped cream.

The method that works best for me, however, is to just make a ganache, whip it to medium-stiff peaks, then fold in the italian meringue. The mixture becomes much firmer than the other methods, making it easier to spread between your layers of sponge and pipe rosettes on top.

To put the cake together, add a layer of sponge on your serving dish, saturate it with the syrup, add a dollop of mousse over the sponge and spread it out evenly using an offset spatula. Repeat the process for the remaining two layers of sponge and refrigerate while you prepare your piping bag.

Add the remaining mousse into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle, and pipe rosettes or any other design you like all over the top and sides of your cake, and voila! A lighter, less cloyingly sweet version of the classic Serano cake.

About telethonrunner

I watch copious amounts of TV and write about it. I also watch movies and am ridiculously addicted to cooking shows.

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