When I read through this recipe I wondered if I could actually pull this off as a success. I decided that I didn’t want to have the pressure of making it for a special event, so I just made it on a day off and took it to work the next day. As it turned out, I had a success! I did begin with a fail—the nuts. I swirled and played with the sugar too much and the syrup was evaporating and it hadn’t turned amber. I panicked and put the nuts in and ended up with a soft white opaque covering on the nuts instead of beautiful shiny amber coating. I decided to do them over and had success the second time around. This time I just swirled the syrup to moisten the sugar, and then left it alone. I watched it carefully as it turned to a beautiful amber color. We ate the failed sugar coated nuts and they tasted great even though they weren’t pretty. Next step make the cake. Whisking the eggs and brown sugar over simmering water instilled a bit of panic, however, it worked and I didn’t end up with sweet scrambled eggs. I did have a crack in the cake after I rolled it, but as Dorie says, filling and frosting patch it up nicely. Preparing the frosting was another tricky procedure; pouring 242 degree syrup into the mixer while it is running at medium speed beating the egg whites, but I actually did it without mishap. My frosting turned into the beautiful shiny marshmallow look that was in the photo in the book. All of this only took an afternoon to accomplish. I had thought it would take much longer.   I took it to work and it was eaten within an hour of the announcement that there was cake in the staff lounge.

I really enjoyed making this and would not hesitate to do it again. This was our Christmas assignment from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking Chez Moi, baking group.   We do not post the recipes, if you want to try this recipe you will need to purchase the book.  To see how others in the group fared with this recipe you can check the blog, Tuesday’s with Dorie.