Opinion – Marcelo Katsuki: Learn the recipe for the traditional Pernambuco wedding cake

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The Pernambuco wedding cake, that marvel inspired by the English cake and which is a mandatory presence at weddings in Recife, is about to become Pernambuco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. That’s what I read recently in an article on the Uninassau website. Who goes to Recife, has to prove it. I brought a whole cake myself on my last trip, it’s too good.

The cake has dark and dense dough, thanks to the use of raisins and prunes. The sweet taste comes from muscatel wine and the finish is made with royal icing, sweet and sour. In Recife it is possible to taste it in pastry shops and coffee shops, but here, just doing it. That’s why I’m posting the recipe below, which I made myself, for a friend’s wedding ten years ago. It’s to try and be enchanted. I want to learn this recipe!

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Pernambuco Wedding Cake

The recipe makes a lot, you can make half of it.

Soak 500 g of raisins in 350 ml of muscatel wine for 2 days in the fridge. Blend 500 g of dried plums with a little water in a blender and add 1 cup of sugar. Bring to a boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Let cool.

For the dough: beat 500 g of butter, 500 g of sugar and half a dessert spoon of salt until pale. Add 9 egg yolks (one at a time) and then half a liter of milk and 500 g of wheat flour. Add 400 g of Nescau and beat until uniform.

Add the plum paste, 500 g of candied fruit (optional), the hydrated raisin and 1 cup of this grape wine. Add 9 egg whites gently and arrange in greased shapes with butter and flour. Bake in medium-high oven for 45 minutes and another 30 minutes on low heat, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Wait for it to completely cool down to start assembling. This recipe makes a lot of cakes, you can make half.

For the royal icing: add 2 egg whites, juice of 1 lemon, 150 g of icing sugar and beat for 4 minutes, until it is firm and does not come off the spatula. Waterproof the cake with a paste of white (pasteurized), lemon and sugar, beaten by hand (it becomes liquid) and let it dry for about 4 hours.

Make the marble by taking some of the royal icing and adding more granulated sugar, beating with your hand until it looks like play dough. Cover the cake with this marble and then decorate using royal icing. This endless path technique (with a pastry bag and a thin nozzle) is good because it hides imperfections in the marble. And if applied directly on the cake (naked, without the marble) it gives a beautiful effect, as you can see in the photo above.

Thanks to the banqueter from Pernambuco, Ana Paiva, who taught me how to prepare royal icing.

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