So i have a cake to make for this thursday and i ve gotten my hands on some freeze dried raspberries, plus i ve gotten some frozen raspberries / strawberries hanging about =)
So i was planning on
A) White velvet cake with a dacquoise incorporating the freeze dried raspberries and then a white chocolate buttercream
B) White velvet cake with strawberry or raspberry mousseline and a vanilla dacquoise
C) Raspberry cake with white chocolate mousseline and a dacquoise with the freeze dried berries ( Have no idea on the proportion of powdered fruit to add =/ )

Has anyone done this combination and if so how did you and would you recommend it =)

bump =)

I’ve never used anything but nuts in our daquoise (we make a chocolate cake/almond daquoise/coffee buttercream version, as well as one with hazelnut and hazelnut buttercream); but I would do an almond daquoise with the raspberry buttercream.  I’d experiment with the freeze dried raspberries first just to not have the pressure of what if it doesn’t work and you need to do some tweaking.  We have raspberry and passionfruit powder that I bought to use in macaron, but it didn’t work (the flavor was so muted you couldn’t even tell it was in there).

If your freeze-dried fruit can be processed into the same piece/particle size and weight as either the nuts in Rose’s dacquoise or the cocoa in Rose’s cocoa meringue, I would think it might work.  However, I’m with Jeanne, you would definitely need a test run to get an idea of proportions, etc.  Also, I would expect a substitution of fruit for nuts or cocoa to cause the meringue/dacquoise to attract moisture more quickly than in the standard preparations, so that’s another reason to do a test run.

Anne puts freeze-dried fruit into buttercreams, and they might also be nice in a chiboust, whipped cream or bavarian.  You could also try them with the white chocolate ganache (basically whipped cream stabilized with white chocolate).

good luck!

I wonder about how the pulverized freeze dried fruit will react in the meringue (melting? absorbing any free liquid and swelling?); whereas nuts don’t do any of those things and provide some structure (for want of a better word) in the meringue.  Definitely needs experimenting!

Hi, all!

I do, indeed, put powdered (in the food processor), freeze dried fruit into buttercreams, and they are wonderful!!!!!  It takes a good bit (6 or more of the small “Crispy Green” bags for a 2-layer 9” cake), but it allows you to add more fruit flavor, since there’s no liquid.  That said, after powdering it, I add just enough water to make a paste, then I put that paste into a small amount of buttercream (to disburse it), then put that into the rest of the buttercream.

Jeanne’s suspicion about absobing liquid in the meringue is well-founded.  Any chunks (at least in my experience) will absorb any liqud there is to be absorbed and become “chewy”.  That said, I don’t know how they will react in daquois, since it’s something that is dried.  I would think that a chunk of freeze dried raspberry would be rather intense.

If you put it in a daquois, I’d love to hear about it—your option (A) up there sounds AMAZING! 

In fact, whatever you do, I’d love to hear about it!!!!!!

Happy day!

—ak