Tivoli Cakes

Directions

1. 1
   Weigh your egg whites - you need three times the amount of sugar. Then start by beating the whites until they foam up a bit and then gradually add the sugar - I used a stand mixer and it took about 12 minutes until all the sugar was absorbed. You can test the progress along the way - the meringue should be completely smooth without any grittyness from the sugar. Just before it's done, add a dash of vinegar - I used a nice cherry vinegar.
2. 2
   In the finished cake the meringues are fitted on top of portion sized shell baked of sweet pastry. So when you know the size you want to make - mine are quite small so people get two each- draw similar sized circles on a sheet of parchment paper for baking. Pipe each meringue in a generous dome on the circle. Bake at least one hour at 285F.
3. 3
   Beat the two egg whites with the sugar until it becomes a smooth, pale yellow color, then add the rum.
4. 4
   Beat the cream until it is light an fluffy. Then carefully fold most of the whipped cream into the beaten egg yolkes with the rum. You need a not too runny cream.
5. 5
   Well the format for these recipes does not allow me to add the other to things you need to make: Sweet pastry and apple sauce. For the pastry: Crumble 4 oz of butter into 8 oz of flour, add 3 oz of sugar and one egg. As quick as you can bring the dough together and then cool it for at least 1 hour in the fridge. If it's too dry add a teaspoon of water at the time. After and hour roll the dough out and cut 4 or 8 circles that fit into the kind of cake mold you use. You need a small pie shape - you can use a muffin form and just press the round of dough into it. Blind bake for 16 minutes at 375 f. The pastry shell should only be lightly baked - or the cake will turn into a mess when you eat it.
6. 6
   Apple Sauce: Core and peel two sweet, fragrant apples. Cut them into pieces and put them into a sauce pan, add the juice of a quarter of a lemon. Scrape the seeds out of a vanilla pod and mix that with about two table spoons of sugar - add to sauce along with the pods and cook for 5-8 minutes. Cool.
7. 7
   Assembly: Fill the pastry shells with apple sauce, pipe a ring of whipped cream along the edge of the pastry. Dip the meringues into the rum cream and pipe a thin line of currant - or rhubarb - jelly in a swirl down the cake. As is evident from the picture, my rhubarb jelly was too runny.
8. 8
   Variation: Make half the cakes with rhubarb sauce in stead of apple sauce, it you have those at hand. I cooked two stalks with 2 spoon fulls of sugar, a small rosemary twig and a tiny ear of star anise as well as a bit of water. Cooking time: 5-8 minutes.
9. 9
   The raw egg cream: Use pasteurized egg yolks if you are at all concerned with eating uncooked egg. I'm from viking stock so I live dangerously.