Recipes
Using the paddle, combine the butter, cream cheese, flour, light brown cane sugar, ground almonds and fleur de sel. Add the oats, seeds and nuts.
Whisk the egg whites with the powdered whites, add the sugar (1) and beat until stiff peaks form, finishing with the addition of the combined xanthan gum and sugar (2). Fold in the sifted together icing sugar, ground almonds, flour and cornstarch using a rubber spatula.
Cut the frozen apricot halves in four. Heat the apricot purée, lime zest, honey, thyme and apricot pieces. At 40°C, stir in the light brown cane sugar (1) combined with the pectin and bring to the boil. Add the light brown cane sugar (2) then bring back to the boil. Remove from the heat and add the gelatin mass and apricot liqueur.
Apricot mirror glaze: Strain out 100 g of liquid and add 250 g of mirror glaze. Correct the colour as needed depending on the colour of the apricots. Let cook and keep the two mixtures in the refrigerator.
Bring the milk and vanilla beans to the boil. Let infuse 10 minutes then strain. Add the gelatin mass, orgeat syrup, cream cheese, bitter almond extract and blend with a hand mixer. Add the chilled cream and mascarpone then blend again to emulsify. Refrigerate for a minimum of 4 hours (ideally overnight).
Bring the ingredients to the boil.
Roll out the cream cheese streusel to 1 cm thick. Cut into 2-cm squares (approximately 5 g). Press the squares inside an 18-cm ring to form nuggets and freeze without the ring.
Pipe out 150 g of dacquoise in an unbuttered 18-cm ring on a sheet of baking paper using a 10-mm plain tip. Make an incision in the middle of the dacquoise using a paring knife. Arrange 100 g of streusel nuggets along the inside of the ring. Bake in a 150°C convection oven for approximately 25 min. Let cool.
Spread 170 g of apricot compote on each dacquoise. Whip the almond cream. Pipe out a spiral of cream (approximately 35 g) topped with irregular peaks using a 12-mm plain tip (approximately 170 g). Make a depression in a few (6 or 7) of the peaks using a melon baller. Place in the freezer, then fill the depressions with the apricot mirror glaze. Return to the freezer, spray with the mirror glaze and decorate with lemon thyme sprigs. Blend the remaining apricot compote with the hand mixer and pipe dots between the peaks of cream. Sprinkle the sides of the dacquoises with decorative snow sugar.
The quality of the apricot purée and the apricots is extremely important. You can adapt the quantity of thyme according to your taste.
