Home › Cakes and Pastry › Cakes and Pastry: Genoese
Cakes and Pastry: Genoese
Pâtisserie génoise is Genoese pastry.
Gâteau génoise aux abricots is a cake of Genoese paste cut in slices, spread with apricot marma lade, and put together again; covered with the marmalade, and served with whipped Little shapes or cakes made of this paste decorated with pink and white icing are called Génoises glacés à l'Italienne. cream.
As Génoises aux amandes, they are masked with meringue mixture, and sprinkled with chopped almonds, etc.
Génoise aux confitures is a thin piece spread with jam and rolled. This is known as a Swiss roll, and is sometimes called Cannelon à la Suisse.
This is not a recipe but a key: one sponge, called Génoise paste, and half a dozen menu names for the different ways of finishing it. A modern baker needs to know what the base is before any of the names mean anything.
- The paste itselfGénoise is a whole-egg sponge. Eggs and sugar are warmed and whisked to a thick ribbon, flour is folded in, then melted butter. It bakes firm and close-grained, which is why this book treats it as a material to be cut, layered, rolled and masked rather than as a cake to be eaten plain.
- “Marmalade” means jamApricot marmalade here is thick apricot preserve, used as glue between the slices and as a glaze over the top. Ordinary apricot jam, sieved and warmed until it falls from the spoon in a sheet, does the same work. No citrus is involved.
- The Swiss roll, twice namedGénoise aux confitures is a thin sheet spread with jam and rolled. The page admits it is a Swiss roll and that a menu might call it Cannelon à la Suisse. Bake it thin and roll it while still warm in a cloth and it cracks far less.
- Icing, not buttercreamThe pink and white icing on the little Génoises glacés à l’Italienne is a poured sugar glaze, thin enough to flow and set hard. Buttercream would be wrong for the finish described, which is meant to look lacquered.
- A sentence has come adriftThe line about whipped cream now sits after the sentence about iced little cakes. It belongs to the apricot gâteau above it, which is the thing served with whipped cream. Read it back into place and the entry makes sense.
A book like this exists because the dish and its name were two separate problems. The sponge was English enough, out of the same bowl as any layer cake, but a dinner card had to be written in French, and so a jam roll from the nursery arrives at table as Cannelon à la Suisse. The page shows a household where the cook could already make the thing and somebody upstairs still needed to be told what to call it.