TWD: Dacquoise with Caramelized Bananas and Cocoa Cream

Check out our swanky new logo! Jaime of Good Eats n’ Sweet Treats told her friend Lisa of Surviving Oz and this is one of the versions she created (there is another color variation). Don't you just looooove it!

Sheesh. This was almost the Tuesdays with Dorie challenge that didn't happen. It would have been the first one I've missed since I joined over a year ago. I had all good intentions of making the recipe exactly as it was in the book, but as you can see, that didn't happen.

This week's hostess was Andrea of Andrea in the Kitchen where you'll find the recipe for the Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise - my subs are all detailed below.

What did happen was a lot of planning, then a lot of Father's Day stuff, then remembering Monday afternoon that I still hadn't made this yet!

There was quite the discussion between me, as well as a few friends on Twitter last week all about this week's dessert - Maria, Clara, Janet, Natalie, Rebecca, Kayte, Tania, Nancy, FujiMama, and Sarah - first, who in the TWD crew was planning to go for it this week and second, what I could sub the pineapple for. I didn't have pineapple, and I don't like pineapple. I wanted to try this so, I wanted something I would actually want to eat.

We discussed the possibility of strawberries - and though most of us agreed that it would probably be quite tasty - at some point I got the idea to use bananas - specifically banana slices with some caramelized sugar on them, my personal favorite - as the topping. Replace one tropical fruit with another! It ended up being the perfect substitute and we all loved it.

Nancy was kind enough to let me know the weight of the dry ingredients for the actual dacquoise (193 grams) so making a half recipe was simple enough at that point (96.5 grams).

I traced a 3 6-inch circles on my parchment on one sheet and put the dacquoise mixture into a piping bag and piped the circles (fairly thick - they were almost 3/4-inch tall). Where I messed everything up was when I put them in the oven. I had been using the oven for something else and was too impatient because it was still too hot. My discs sort of melted down into the thin layers you see, which I really have no idea if it is normal or not, but there you go. Either way, I let them bake the alloted amount of time with the oven now cooled to the correct temperature until I basically thought they were done. They were quite possibly more crunchy than they should have been, but with the cream filling it was a nice contrast.

I also obviously replaced the filling. I wanted something simple, fast and light so I just made a simple cocoa whipped cream. It is just a combination of 2 cups heavy cream + 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder + 1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar = beat until as thick as you want - it is great for a light frosting on other cakes too - especially chocolate!

After searching online and finding a post at Zoe Bakes about dacquoise (and also a very helpful tweet from Zoe herself about not assembling the components too early before serving since it would get soggy) that really this was something that you can make and use as a filling between cake layers. Who'd a thunk it!? Not me. Maybe next time, when I actually don't mess up the temperature, it will be even better!

Don't forget to check out how the other TWD Bakers fared this week - check the blogroll!