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Lychee Cake With Pink Biscuits

A slice of lychee cake on a white dessert plate.
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This lychee cake (litchi cake) is a French charlotte made with pink Champagne biscuits, an Italian sponge, and a light lychee Bavarian cream. Canned lychees make this lychee cake recipe easy to prepare all year, and the pink color suits birthdays, Mother's Day, and Valentine's Day.

Ingredients

Scale

For charlotte:

For the Bavarian cream:

  • 500 g canned lychee (2 cans of lychee in syrup)
  • 1/3 cup + 1 1/2 tablespoons (100 g) sugar
  • 4 gelatin sheets
  • 1 cup + 4 teaspoons (250 g) whipping cream
  • 0.5 oz (15 g) shredded coconut

For the decoration:

  • 1 drained lychee

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Instructions

  1. To make the sponge, follow the Italian Sponge Cake Recipe. Add about 5 drops of red food color to the ready batter and bake as directed. Check the biscuit's readiness with a toothpick: once you remove the clean toothpick from the sponge, the biscuit is ready.
  2. Adjust a mousse cake mold to 7 inches/17-18 cm in diameter, line it with the acetate cake collar, and place it on parchment paper. Cut one of the ends of the pink biscuits with a serrated knife and arrange them all around the ring.
  3. Cut the sponge Genoise in two halves crosswise using a serrated knife or a cake lever. Place one half aside and cut a biscuit disk from the other half. The disk must be large enough to fit at the bottom of the mousse ring lined with biscuits.
  4. Drain lychees and keep the syrup. Soak the cake's biscuit base in the lychee syrup.
  5. To make the Bavarian cream, soak gelatin sheets in cold water for 5 to 10 minutes. Crush the drained lychee (do not forget to keep one whole lychee for the decoration) in a food processor. You will get 1 3/4 cups (400 ml) of the lychee puree.
  6. Heat the lychee puree with sugar in a saucepan till the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove the pan from the heat, add the drained gelatin sheets, and mix with a hand whisk. Cover the mixture with plastic wrap and refrigerate until it cools.
  7. Whisk the whipping cream until it forms whipped cream. Once the lychee preparation is cold, add the whipped cream and whisk to combine. Add shredded coconut and mix to combine. Pour the Bavarian cream into the mousse mold and refrigerate the charlotte for at least two hours, preferably overnight.
  8. Remove the mousse mold and peel off the acetate film. Make pink crumbs from the remaining half of the pink sponge genoise, using a fork or your hands. Decorate the top of the cake with crumbs and arrange the whole lychee on top. 

Notes

  1. If you prefer, flavor the sponge with a few drops of rose water while making the cake batter.
  2. Make the sponge cake the day before, wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate.
  3. Drain the lychee puree through a mesh strainer to obtain lychee juice, then follow the same recipe to make the Bavarian cream. The cream will be smoother without the lychee puree.
  4. Decorate the top of the cake with fresh raspberries or mini-marshmallows if you prefer.

Nutrition

Find it online: https://www.bakinglikeachef.com/lychee-cake-charlotte-pink-biscuits/