Exploring the landscape of my heart - hazelnut dacquoise with pears and blackcurrants

Exploring the landscape of my heart - hazelnut dacquoise with pears and blackcurrants

• 4 Jun 2025

I borrowed a copy of Nadine Ingram's Love Crumbs from my local library and bookmarked about 1/4 of the recipes. Many of the recipes require time; have multiple steps and sometimes difficult to source ingredients but then again, what is life without a challenge. Nadine's recipes are precise and her instructions are very detailed. Although I've reduced the size of the cake I've only made small edits to the instructions.

I decided to make a small version of 'Exploring the Landscape of my Heart', 3 layers of hazelnut dacquoise layered with pears and blackcurrants. This is not a recipe for the faint hearted but as I'm on extended leave from work I have time to tackle some of the more complex recipes from the book. As it's now winter in Sydney, pears abound and I knew my local source of frozen sour cherries also stocked blackcurrants, so off to Russkis Deli I went.

I bought a bag of roasted hazelnuts in Canberra then on my return I made some crème fraiche, a key ingredient of the Gianduja ganache. Then I roasted the pears and made the blackcurrant compote, followed by the hazelnut dacquoise. The whipped ricotta was made just before I assembled the cake.

Here's the recipe for you which makes a 16cm cake, which serves 6-8 people. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20-ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Hazelnut dacquoise with pear and blackcurrants

Blackcurrant compote
200g blackcurrants, fresh or frozen
35g caster sugar
½ orange, zested and juiced

Baked pears
3 pears, bosc are best
½ vanilla bean, split seeds scraped
50g brown sugar
½ orange, zested and juiced

Hazelnut dacquoise
200g hazelnuts, toasted and peeled
25g unsalted butter, softened for greasing
5 (150g) egg whites
155g caster sugar

Whipped ricotta
250g fresh ricotta, drained overnight
¾ tbs caster sugar
½ vanilla bean, split seeds scraped
½ orange, zested

Gianduja ganache
75g hazelnuts, toasted and peeled
45g icing sugar
120g good quality milk chocolate (minimum 40% cocoa solids)
100g crème fraiche

To assemble
1 tbs icing sugar

Blackcurrant compote
Place the blackcurrants, sugar and orange zest and juice in a medium saucepan over low heat and cook, stirring the fruit so that the sugar evenly coats the berries. Once the sugar is dissolved, increase the heat to medium and simmer the compote for 10-15 minutes or until the syrup thickens. Even if you're using frozen blackcurrants there shouldn't be much liquid coming out of the fruit and the syrup should glaze the fruit perfectly. Turn off the heat and allow the compote to cool completely in the saucepan. The compote can be made up to 4 days in advance and kept in the fridge. 

Baked pears
Preheat the oven to 160°C, fan forced. Begin by peeling the pears, taking care to remove all the skin, even the little crown around the stem. Cut the pears in half and use a Parisienne scoop or melon baller to remove the core and the fibrous stem leading from the seeds to the stem, being careful to preserve as much of the pear flesh as possible. The stem should also come off but, again, try to maintain the integrity of the pear's shape by taking it off carefully.

Scrape the vanilla seeds from half the bean using a sharp paring knife and while the seeds are still stuck to the blade, spread them evenly onto each pear half, then place the pears cut-side up in a flat baking dish. Sprinkle the pears with the sugar and zest, then squeeze over the orange juice and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven. flip the pears over and return them to the oven for a further 15 minutes or until they are tender. The ripeness of the pears will determine the cooking time, so test them after the first 20 minutes by piercing them with the tip of a paring knife to check their tenderness. A little bite can be a lovely thing, so no need for them to be absolutely soft. Use your judgement to decide when they should be removed from the oven, then allow them to cool completely in the baking dish. The pears can be baked up to 4 days in advance and kept in the fridge.

Hazelnut dacquoise
Preheat the oven to 175°C, fan forced. After the hazelnut skins have been removed, crush the nuts finely either using a food processor or a pestle and mortar. It's fine to have a few coarser pieces for texture, although the majority of the crumb should be fine like breadcrumbs.

Line the base only of 3 x 16cm cake tins with baking paper and butter the sides of the tins with the softened butter. Remove 30g from the hazelnut crumbs and roll them around the inside of the tins, pressing them into the sides of the tins to embed into the butter. This will give the dacquoise a rustic edge when the cakes are removed from the tins. Don't worry if you also get crumbs on the base of the tin.

Separate and weigh the egg whites and place them into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Add a pinch of salt and whip the whites on high speed until soft ribbons start to form, then gradually add half the sugar 1 tablespoon at a time, until the meringue is thick and glossy. Remove the bowl from the mixer and add the remaining crushed hazelnuts and the remaining sugar, then fold through thoroughly. 

Divide the dacquoise between the tins and use an offset palette knife to smooth the tops. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden and crisp. Remove the dacquoise from the oven, leaving them to cool for only 5 minutes, before slipping them out of the tins onto a cooling rack. As the dacquoise cools the meringue becomes chewy and a little sticky, so if you leave them in the tins for longer they may stick to the bottom.

The dacquoise layers will sink and form a crater in the middle, this is completely normal and will give you a place to fill with all the fruit and ricotta. (Mine didn't).

Whipped ricotta
The ricotta for this recipe is fresh, so it will need to be well-drained for 24 hours in advance. Be sure to remove it from the plastic the night before as sometimes it sits in the whey and doesn't drain.

Scrape the seeds from the remaining vanilla bean and place them on a chopping board, then sprinkle with the sugar and use a knife or offset palette knife to rub the sugar into the seeds. This is the best way to distribute vanilla seeds through a mixture to infuse the flavour. 

Combine the ricotta, zest and vanilla sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whip everything together on high speed for 5 minutes. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl every now and then to incorporate any wayward ricotta lumps. This filling falls like soft clouds onto the cake layers and while it will start to form thick ribbons around the whisk as you whip it, the consistency will never be firmly whipped. It only has a very small amount of sugar because I want to retain the pure quality of the ricotta.

Use a spatula to remove the ricotta from the mixing bowl, then cover and place in the fridge until you're ready to assemble the cake.

Gianduja ganache
Ensure the hazelnuts have been toasted to golden, as sometimes, if pre-peeled hazelnuts are sourced, they can be quite beige, and the resulting flavour is not as good.

Place the hazelnuts and icing sugar in the bowl of a small food processor or a blender and blitz together until a smooth paste forms. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl regularly in order to achieve a consistent, smooth texture and engage the pulse function (if you have one) to return the nuts to the middle of the bowl. Once you are happy the paste is smooth, turn off and leave the paste in the food processor bowl.

Melt the milk chocolate in a medium heatproof bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water, ensuring the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl. Stir the chocolate occasionally to distribute the heat and try not to heat the chocolate higher than 50°C. Pour the chocolate into the bowl of the food processor with the paste and blend until very smooth, again scraping down the sides of the bowl to create a cohesive mixture. Turn off the machine again. What you have in the food processor now is the components of gianduja. The addition of the crème fraîche below turns it into a ganache.

Bring the crème fraîche to the boil in a small saucepan over medium heat, then pour it into the food processor with the gianduja and continue to blend until shiny and silky. Pour the ganache into a bowl then cover it and leave at room temperature to cool until ready to use.

This recipe will make more than enough for the cake sizes here, since a minimum amount of 75 g of hazelnuts is needed to create a smooth paste in a small food processor. Rest assured, excess ganache can be kept in the fridge then melted and poured over ice-cream when comfort is needed.

To assemble
Position a dacquoise layer on your platter. Pour approximately ¼ cup of the gianduja ganache into the centre and spread to the outside of the cake using an offset palette knife, trickling a little over the edges. Arrange half the pears evenly over the surface of the chocolate, (I halved each pear and managed to fit 5 quarters over the cake) then spoon over half the whipped ricotta and gently push to the edges. Spoon one-third of the blackcurrant compote over the ricotta and top with the second layer of dacquoise. (I didn’t but I would drain the currants first before assembling the cake). Repeat this layering, finishing with the third layer of dacquoise. Dust the top with icing sugar and scatter with the remaining blackcurrant compote.

Nadine suggests making all the components ahead of time and assembling the cake very last-minute and to eat it on the same day. 

I must say that I disagree. I thought the cake was at its best the day after making it when the dacquoise had softened and the flavours had a chance to infuse. The blackcurrants are refreshingly tart and I topped my breakfast porridge with the leftover baked pears and blackcurrant compote.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian