Adriano Zumbo’s V8 Cake

One word: INSANE!

Mission somewhat accomplished! Indeed,  I felt like I survived the worst kitchen battle I’ve ever put myself through. Adriano Zumbo! What a genius! RESPECT! And I thought I was pretty insane when I decided to attempt this painful V8 cake featured as a pressure test in the most recent Masterchef Australia series. At 12am, I should be saying “hello boudoir!”, not start work on this monster of a cake. Serve me right for looking as white as the titanium dioxide that lends this cake such blinding brilliance!  The process was extremely tedious but the taste was nothing short of AMAZING! How can a vanilla cake pack such a flavour punch? This cake puts the term ‘plain vanilla’ to shame. Mr. Zumbo certainly knows how to play around with flavours; this divine creation teased the taste buds with nuances of sweetness, saltiness, bittersweetness paired with textural sensation of  crunchy, soft, creamy, the sleekness and bite of the gell layer…all in a single mouthful! 

Since this Masterchef pressure test aired on 19th July, I have longed to attempt this masterpiece dressed angelically in white but hell to make. When I finally got hold of the Titanium Dioxide, I was overcome by impulse and set to work on the cake close to midnight. It could have been a recipe for disaster as I assumed that I had the ingredients in the correct amounts; fortunately I did (the thickened cream was just sufficient, no more, no  less..phew!).  I used up at least 8-10 vanilla beans from my stash..a luxury I usually allow for special projects. I studied the recipe a few times and also referred to extremely useful hints from Anita of Leave Room For Dessert, who has already succesfully attempted it. Hooray!

When Adriano Zumbo gave this a difficulty level of 10 out of 10, he wasn’t kidding. The contestants were given 4 hours to replicate this ginormous task and I so feel their pain. While I had no problems making the individual layer components, the vanilla ganache was extremely painful to make; my hand-held stick blender could not breakdown the couverture white chocolate chips (not sure if it was due to the extreme winter cold) so I resorted to melting the ganache ingredients, letting it set and then whizzing it with the blender. I probably applied too much heat to the very sensitive white chocolate so my ganache split. DANG! But I tried my best to rescue it and process it into a smooth paste but it still ended up slightly grainy; definitely a point to remember next time.

Assembly: left to right, toasted vanilla brulee, vanilla chiffon, vanilla dacquoise, forgot to take a photo of the vanilla macaron

 The second problem I had was the assembling of the cake. Although I used a round acetate-lined cake tin instead of square, that didn’t make the assembling any easier; my crème chantilly was like a set custard so it made spreading up the sides of the tin quite difficult and then I struggled massively to even out the glossy vanilla glaze around the sides of the cake. The surface was covered but the sides were HIDEOUS! But thank goodness for the white chocolate tiles; they somewhat lessened the ‘ugly’. Which brings me to the tempering of the white chocolate. This is my first time tempering chocolate properly so with my notes on tempering temperatures in hand, inexperience, three tries (I just re-tempered the chocolate each time it failed) and with grunts of frustration,I finally got it right and squealed when I gently peeled the acetate from a white chocolate tile and voila! shiny, glossy and a clean snap that was music to my ears. The white chocolate flower however, lacked finesse even though it came from the same batch of tempered chocolate as the tiles; maybe I was handling it too much but I er…ah..er… rolled it the wrong way so the ugly side was facing upwards instead of the glossy side. Haha… And last but not least, the most annoying problem I had was transfering the cake to the serving platter. There I have a fully assembled cake which thankfully hasn’t collapsed into a messy puddle BUT then I had to move the cake which was resting on a cooling wire rack. Bad mistake; the weight of the layers have pushed my dacquoise  base into the wire grooves so whilst trying to gently slide the cake onto the platter, some of my dacquoise got left behind. SOB SOB SOB!

see the gap between the vanilla ganache and almond crunch? structural damage/imbalance due to massacred vanilla dacquoise during cake transfer to serving platter 🙁 mark of a very delicate cake.

I lost sleep from this experience but it was kind of great throwing myself into the deep end. I actually learnt a lot from making the layer components especially the praline based vanilla almond crunch. To me, this was the hero of the entire cake as it was crunchy, nutty and the addition of salt elevated the flavour of the entire cake. The next best layer was the vanilla toasted brulee, it gave a bitter earthy edge to cut the sweetness of the other layers and the vanilla water gell was like a hidden surprise that gave out a refreshing burst, also to offset the sweetness of the other components.

Overall, a great learning experience although I did not enjoy washing the clutter of dishes, pots and utensils between making each layers. That took up a significant amount of time, what with confined bench space as well. To those who sampled a piece, I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it. I will definitely attempt this again, hopefully at normal hours of the day.

• If you’d like to attempt this, click here for the recipe on the Masterchef website. You can also watch the full episode
   
• Also, Anita from Leave Room For Dessert, gave good tips and notes on making this cake so I shall not reiterate them here. Click here for her rendition of the V8 cake.
   
• The only modification was I used agar-agar instead of gellan for my vanilla water gel as agar-agar sets firmer than gelatine. Gellan would break my budget  at $110 for a 250 g bottle, and the recipe only required 1.5 g of it.
   
• To temper white couverture chocolate, you will need a chocolate thermometer or a digital thermometer (I used the latter). This is what I did using the Injection Method, or seeding method:-
  Stage 1  –   In a double boiler or a heat proof bowl sitting atop a pot of simmering water, melt half the white
                        chocolate to 40^oC – 45^oC
  Stage 2 –  Add the remaining couverture chocolate to the melted chocolate and stir well to bring the
                        temperature down to 26^oC – 27^oC
  Stage 3 –   Warm the chocolate in the double boiler until it reaches 29^oC – 30^oC. This is called the working
                         temperature. You can now pour this chocolate on your acetate sheet to form the chocolate tiles and
                         triangles for the flower.
   
• From personal observation, I noted that the temperature of the melted chocolate will continue to rise so rather than take it off the heat at exactly 44^oC of Stage 1, I wait for it to reach about 41^oC – 42^oC before taking it off the heat as the temperature will continue to rise to my desired 44^oC.  I then immediately add the remaining chocolate to bring down the temperature as specified in stage 2 and proceed to re-heat it back to 30^oC, again taking note of how the residual heat will work. If the chocolate has gone beyond the recommended ‘working’ temperature, you could have possibly destroyed the lovely crystal bonds formed during tempering, that gives tempered chocolate that glossy look, crisp and clean snap, so you will have to repeat the entire process from stage 1. Note the above temperatures are for tempering white chocolate, dark chocolate requires higher tempering temperatures.

• Have  fun and stay tuned for improved V8 Cake Number 2! Technically it should be a V9 cake unless the glaze isn’t counted as a layer? Hmmmm……

Me love the chocolate tile 🙂

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