It's Daring Bakers time again.
Natalia of Gatti Fili e Farina challenges us to make a traditional Savarin, complete with soaking syrup and cream filling! We were to follow the Savarin recipe but were allowed to be creative with the soaking syrup and filling, allowing us to come up with some very delicious cakes!
I decided to veer away from the traditional Savarin flavours to make a Cherry Savarin by soaking my Savarin in a cherry brandy syrup (1/2 cup cherry brandy + 2 cups water + 1/4 cup icing sugar, boiled up together) and topping it with a cherry compote made from frozen cherries. I made crème patisserie for the filling as I love custard.
The Savarin took an awfully long time to make because of the rising time involved - I think my Savarin had around 6 hours or so of rising time. I also found that I did not have quite enough syrup, so while three quarters of the Savarin was nice and soft and spongy, the bottom remained rather bread-like. I also think this could have been better if I had soaked the bottom of the Savarin in a bowl of syrup as well as pouring on the syrup in the cake tin while the Savarin was hot.
Nevertheless, the Savarin was rather delicious:
I mean, custard and cherries - how bad can it be? The Savarin also got snapped up at work, although nobody really knew what it was. This was the proof of the pudding in my books.
Thanks to Natalia for hosting this month - if you are keen to make a Savarin, she will have the recipe we used on her blog. To see a rainbow array of Savarins, visit the slide show on the Daring Kitchen website on 27 April, US time.
