Cake "Swan Lake"

Delicious and spectacular chocolate cake with walnut meringue will decorate any holiday. You will have to work a little, but there is nothing complicated, and everyone can cook.

Ingredients

• For the biscuit:
• Eggs - 6-7 pcs.
• Sugar - 120 g
• Flour - 130 g
• Cocoa - 30 g
• Vanilla sugar - 1 sachet
• Baking powder - 1 tsp
• For meringue:
• Proteins - 5 pcs.
• Sugar - 250 g
• Walnuts - 150 g
• Vanilla sugar - 1 sachet
• For buttercream:
• Butter - 400 g
• Condensed milk - 600 g
• Cognac - 1 tbsp. l.
• For buttercream:
• Cream - 250 g
• Powdered sugar - 100 g
• For glaze:
• Cream - 100 g
• Sugar - 130 g
• Gelatin - 6 g
• Water (for syrup) - 50 ml
• Butter - 15 g
• Cocoa - 30 g
• Chocolate - 50 g
• For meringue cakes "Swans":
• Protein - 1 pc.
• Sugar - 60 g

Directions

1. Beat eggs with sugar for 10 minutes.
2. At the end, add vanilla sugar.
3. In three additions, sift through a sieve, dry ingredients: flour, cocoa, baking powder. Mix from top to bottom.
4. We spread the dough in forms of 26 cm and 15 cm.
5. Bake for 30 minutes at 180 degrees. Let the finished biscuit cool, and then take it out of the mold.
6. After the biscuits have rested for 5-6 hours, cut them into 2 parts.
7. We prepare products for meringue.
8. Dry the nuts in a pan over low heat for 6 minutes, stirring every 2 minutes.
9. Grind in a blender into crumbs, but not into flour.
10. Beat the whites with a pinch of salt until foamy, then gradually introduce sugar and beat for 10 minutes.
11. Add chopped nuts to the proteins in several steps, mixing from top to bottom.
12. On the parchment, draw circles of the same diameter as the chocolate cakes. We spread the meringue on the prepared parchment. You should get two circles with a diameter of 25 cm and two circles with a diameter of 14 cm. Bake for 25 minutes at 160 degrees, leave in the oven for another 1 hour.
13. We prepare products for buttercream.
14. Beat the butter until white, stopping in the process and scraping the mass from the walls. Gradually, without stopping beating, add the condensed milk in a thin stream. At the end, add cognac.
15. Gathers a cake with a diameter of 26 cm. Spread a biscuit, grease with butter and condensed milk cream.
16. We put walnut meringue on the biscuit, grease again with butter cream. Then another meringue cake and cream.
17. Put the biscuit on top again and grease with a thin layer of buttercream.
18. In the same way we collect a cake of smaller diameter. We put in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.
19. We are preparing products for the butter cream, which will be needed to level the cake and for the "swans".
20. Whip cold cream with powdered sugar.
21. We set aside a small part of the cream for the swans. With the main mass, we align both tiers of the cake.
22. We prepare products for glaze. Gelatin is soaked in cold water in a ratio of 1:5.
23. Heat the cream, bring to a boil and remove from heat.
24. We make sugar syrup from water and sugar. From the moment of boiling, cook for 3 minutes.
25. In hot cream, add butter, cocoa, gelatin. We mix.
26. Break the chocolate into small pieces and add to the prepared mixture. We mix.
27. Add syrup to the mixture, pouring in a thin stream.
28. Strain and cool to 36 degrees.
29. Pour the frosting into a cornet or pastry bag. We make a hole a few mm.
30. Pour frosting along the edge of the cakes in a zigzag pattern and make smudges. We cover both tiers of the cake. We send it to the refrigerator.
31. When the glaze hardens, put the tier on the tier. To do this, it is best to use cocktail sticks so that the bottom tier of the cake does not crush.
32. We prepare products for "swans".
33. Beat the protein with sugar, put the "necks" and "wings" on a baking sheet, sprinkle with powdered sugar, bake at 100 degrees for 1 hour and leave in the oven for another 1 hour.
34. We make shells on the cake from butter cream, attach "wings" and "necks". Arrange the "swans" on the cake from right to left.
35. Cake "Swan Lake" is ready! There is no limit to joy, especially for children!