"Succès" with raspberries and salted caramel and white chocolate cream (gluten-free)

This is one of my favorite French pastries to make for special occasions, usually with a praline cream, but I've baked a version here with salted caramel cream and raspberries, because I love how the tanginess of the berries contrasts with the macaron (or dacquoise) layer.

Not gonna lie, it does take a few steps in order for it to be a "succès", lol, but if you like to make your life easier like yours truly, I make it over a period of 2 days or more. First I make the caramel and put it in jars, then I make the caramel cream, refrigerate. The next day, I whip up the cream and bake the dacquoise. I subsituted the original praline cream with a salted butter cream and prefer this which gives a light tasty caramel cream, that is strong enough to hold up the cake layer, with the help of the raspberries.

This pastry goes back to the 1960's, created by the French pastry chef Gaston Le Nôtre, originally with a hazelnut butercream and hazelnut or almond powder dacquoise. But rebel that I am, I mostly followed, but... the reason I bake this cake is because I always have leftover egg whites. I freeze them, and when I have about 180-200 g (about 5-6 egg whites), that's enough, I defrost the egg whites for the batter and macarons or dacquoises are made!

Here's what you'll need for the dacquoise:

5 egg whites (about 190 g)

160 g almond flour

130 g confectioners sugar

40 g flour

60 g granulated sugar

For decorating :

+ 2-3 tablespoons of confectioners sugar for decorating

optional : caramel glass made by drizzling the melted caramel on parchment paper - you can do this before adding butter or cream to the caramel)

300-400 g of raspberries

Preheat oven to 325° F or 170° C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Beat egg whites in a bowl until you get soft peaks. Add confectioners sugar and continue to beat until you get resistance from the thickness, about 2 minutes, and the meringue forms stiff peaks. Fold in other dry ingredients delicately. Fill a piping bag with the dacquoise batter and create a spiraling circle until you get two 9-10" disks. Bake until risen, or about 25-30 minutes. I like to leave them in the oven turned off for another 10 minutes, to hold the shape. Useful tip: once you take them out of the oven, in the next 5 minutes or so or until slightly cooler to the touch, remove the parchment paper. If you don't take off the parchment paper readily, it tends to stick because the dacquoise melts somewhat. Learned this the hard way !

For the salted caramel (make this ahead of time, always great for crepes, drizzling on nut bread, pies and tarts, fillings for cookies...)

1 cup pure cane sugar

6 tablespoons salted butter

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon sea-salt

In a saucepan simmer until sugar is bubbling, add the cream and sprinkle salt. Set aside to cool and thicken.

For the salted caramel buttercream:

150 g of white chocolate

10 cl + 10 cl cup whipping cream

1 vanilla bean or 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

+ 1/2 cup salted caramel

Scrape the contents of a vanilla bean and dissolve in 10 cl of cream in a saucepan over medium heat, add white choclate and continue to stir until melted. Take off from heat and add the rest of the cream, whisking until smooth. Allow to cool. Cover with plastic wrap touching the surface of the ganache and refrigerate to harden for about 2 hours, or even better, overnight. Once set, mix with an electric beater on low speed for about 5-8 minutes or until it doubles in volume. Add salted caramel and fold in gently. If too wet, refrigerate for about an hour to set.

A couple of tips, if the cream is too wet and won't stand alone, add a teaspoon of finely powdered milk, and mix about 1 minute with a beater. If it is too hard, or has clumps like cold butter, you've over-beaten, and the only way I've been able to correct this is to start over : warm over medium heat, allow to cool, refrigerate at least 2 hours and then beat again, as you may know there's a point of no return when whipping it !

Dressing the succès : spoon the cream into a piping bag. Place a disk of dacquoise on a serving dish, pipe cream evenly along the edges, then cover the surface inside with cream. Interspace cream with raspberries. Place another disk on top. Sprinkle with fine confectioners sugar. Decorate with caramel glass (you can make these while making the caramel, just before adding the cream to make salted caramel), and continue decorating the top with rasperries.