July Daring Bakers: Macadamia-Apricot Cake

This month's Daring Baker's assignment came from Chris of Mele Cotte. The original cake was a Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream, but I made a few changes, most importantly substituting macadamia nuts for the hazelnuts. Wow, what a delicious cake! Thanks to Chris for this awesome challenge! Here are the layers, from top to bottom:

Slices of fresh apricot
Macadamia praline buttercream
Apricot glaze
Macadamia genoise
Macadamia praline buttercream
Whipped cream (unsweetened)
Rum glaze
Macadamia genoise

The cake itself was light and flavorful, and the addition of the glazes made it extra moist and delicious. This buttercream is one of the best I've ever had! Not too buttery, and the macadamia praline paste made it just incredible. I'm not a great cake decorator, so the finished cake certainly wasn't as beautiful as those of some other DBs this month, but I have to say that the individual slices were gorgeous because of all the layers of yummies!

The original recipe can be found here, but I made a few changes. I used macadamia nuts instead of hazelnuts because another DB had posted on our message board that she tried them and really enjoyed how they worked--plus, they just sounded so summery and delicious to me! They made the thing layers of cake really rich and tasty. I omitted the chocolate ganache glaze simply because I wanted the cake to be as summery as possible and, much as I love dark chocolate, it seems like a more winter-y flavor to me, especially when combined with nuts. I also used a half recipe of Dorie's buttercream recipe (minus the lemon, linked here) for the buttercream, and added in lots and lots of macadamia praline paste (much more than called for in the original), just because I loved how it tasted. Finally, I didn't strain the apricot glaze so that there were some pieces of apricot under the frosting--a delicious surprise!

All in all, this cake seemed to get rave reviews from my "tasters", both from lovers of the Opera cake and those who didn't care for it so much...it was interesting, because although the cakes had some very similar components, they ended up with a very different feel in the final product (of course, they were also different flavors!). One thing I definitely learned from making this cake was to let it sit out for about 15 minutes before eating after it had been in the fridge--all the components are much yummier when softer and closer to room temperature (although everything does cut better cold).

Be sure to check out all the other cakes this month at the Daring Bakers Blogroll (link in sidebar to the left).