My Dairy Free Windtorte

So I decided to make life difficult for myself this week for The Great Bloggers Bake Off by baking a Spanische Windtorte for dessert week. I wasn't going to go near a dairy free creme brûlée no matter how much I wanted to and I didn't want to do the cheesecakes because finding a recipe was driving me nuts. Some how searching the recipes I could only really find the words 'raw', 'healthy', 'sin free', 'guilt free' am I the only person who doesn't give a fig about the guilt!? I felt like it! Besides, I baked a vegan and gluten free cheesecake in a previous Bake Off challenge so I was only left with the 1 option really!

I'm not going to lie, this bake was time consuming, tedious and at times I wasn't sure about sharing it AT ALL. I've replaced the traditional violets with some marzipan roses instead (my budget didn't stretch to the fondant icing and colours needed for this week) I also had to find an alternative to the cream centre. I did that by using several cans of coconut milk chilled in the fridge overnight.

Now for the actual meringue. You're supposed to make several types of meringue at different stages; French Meringue for the 'cake' and lid and Swiss Meringue for the decorating. I only used the French meringue because I had so much!

For the French meringue shell
- 8 large egg whites
- 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
- 475g caster sugar

For the filling
- 2 cans of refrigerated coconut milk
- 50g icing sugar (optional)
- Fresh berries

Fondant and food colouring or marzipan

How to Make:

1. Line 3 large baking trays with baking parchment. Draw around a 8inch baking tin on 2 of the trays and then another one on the remaining tray. (You should end up with 5 circles). Preheat the oven to 120C.

2. For the meringue shell, tip the egg whites and cream of tartar into a large clean bowl and whisk with an electric mixer on high speed until the whites form stiff peaks. Add the caster sugar, a tablespoon at a time, whisking continuously to make a thick, glossy meringue.

3. Spoon some of the meringue into a piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle. Pipe a thick ring inside one of the circles on the baking tray and continue spiraling until the entire circle is filled. Do the same with a second circle. This creates the base and the top of the meringue cake. Do this with the 3 remaining circles, except don't fill in the circles, so that you have three hoops of meringue - these create the sides of the meringue shell. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.


4. Meanwhile, make the flowers for your finished bake. I used marzipan and a silicone rose press. To be traditional you'll want to make fondant violets. I made mine and popped them to one side until needed later. I made 11 in total.

5. When the meringues are dry, gently slide 1 of the cooked, filled meringues onto a heatproof plate. Spoon some meringue into the piping bag and pipe dots of meringue around the edge of the circle. Put 1 of the meringue hoops on top and repeat with the other 2 hoops. Be gentle!

6. Pipe meringue around the sides to hide the hoops and use a spatula to smooth out the meringue so that the sides are smooth and straight and look like a cake. Bake on the plate for 25 minutes (45 if you're going to be doing the swiss meringue for decoration). Remove from the oven and leave to cool then decorate a little with the french meringue. You won't be able to do anything fancy with this meringue. I baked the lid with its decoration at the same time as putting my cake back into the oven to bake the piping.

7. For the filling, open your tins without shaking them. Scoop out the solid cream then whip the cream together with icing sugar if you want it. Fold in the strawberries and raspberries. (I used frozen berries, please don't do this because the moisture from the berries made my wonderful cream not as wonderful!) I popped it in the freezer to thicken again before I spooned it into the cooled meringue cake shell. Once done you can put your lid on and decorate with your flowers. Serve straight away!

Coconut milk process

Here is my finished bake. It took a good couple of hours but it got made! I spent from Thursday evening at my parents house so had a late night making the windtorte on Sunday! But it's done and all linked up with Utterly Scrummy who is hosting Mummy Mishaps link up this week.

Windtorte with filling and lid.

Do you fancy giving this indtorte a go? Or perhaps trying the delicious vegan whipped cream? Let me know how you get on!

Cupcake Mumma