Mazarinkage

Mazarinkage © kvalimad.dk

A classic Danish patisserie cake. Dense, heavy, and moist. Another variation on the pound cake theme — really just a shortcake with marzipan. But again, one that’s worth the effort.

Ingredients

dry

  • 100 g all-purpose flour
  • 100 g potato starch (or cornstarch)
  • 200 g marzipan, grated
  • 1 tbsp baking powder

wet

  • 200 g powdered sugar
  • 200 g butter, melted
  • 4 eggs

ganache / glaze

  • 50 g dark chocolate, 70%
  • 50 g milk chocolate
  • 1 dl cream

Directions #1 — manual method

(Gives a heavier and more moist cake. The cake in the photo was made this way.)

Grate the marzipan as finely as you can be bothered.

Mix the dry ingredients together.

Mix the wet ingredients together.

Combine everything in one of the bowls.

Pour into a greased springform pan.

Directions #2 — food processor

(Gives a lighter, airier cake. And less washing up.)

Put all the wet ingredients in the food processor. Break the marzipan into smaller pieces and add that too. No need to melt the butter.

Blend into a cream. It will probably look split. That doesn’t matter.

Add the dry ingredients and blend just until all the flour is incorporated.

Baking

Bake for about 40 minutes at 355°F (180°C) in a springform pan, until a skewer or knitting needle comes out clean.

A small springform gives a tall, thick cake, and a large one gives a thin cake. A thick cake takes much longer to bake than a thin one — I’ve sometimes had it take up to an hour in a small pan.

Let it cool for at least 20 minutes before adding the ganache.

Ganache

Melt the chocolate in the cream in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat.

Notes

If you want to bake it in a large sheet pan instead of a springform, just multiply the ingredients by 2½ — so you’d get 500 g sugar, for example.

You can get away with only doubling the ganache. There’ll be enough.

The reason for using half potato starch and half regular flour is to make the cake more porous. It’s the gluten and protein in the wheat flour that makes a dough elastic and traps air bubbles. Mixing in pure starch from potato flour is equivalent to using flour with a low protein content.

The cake doesn’t care whether you use starch from potato flour or cornstarch. Cornstarch just costs about 4 times as much as potato starch, so… :-S