Pistachios and other nuts

This entremet was titled Baklava. It is one of the things I always wanted to try but never did. Here it comes in a lovely mousse cake form with lots of flavours balancing each other. There is a honey mousse, pistachio brulee, nut filling and honey roulade sponge - bit time consuming (you can spread the work over two days) but not too difficult.

PISTACHIO CREME BRULEE
400ml whipping cream
4 egg yolks
70g caster sugar
5g gelatine
36g pistachio paste
Put cream with pistachio paste in a pan and bring it to boil. Bloom the gelatine.  Mix egg yolks and sugar together just until they are slightly pale. Add the cream , mix well and return to boil. Let it reach 85C. Take it off the heat, add gelatine and take it straight into an ice bath. It will cool down quickly and begin to thicken. Pour it into 18cm disc 1cm high. You will have some leftover so you can make little cakes as well.  Put it into freezer.

NUT FILLING
200g granulated sugar
60g glucose
75ml water
100ml cream
20g honey
90g roasted walnuts
90g roasted hazelnuts, chopped
25g pistachios, chopped
35g roasted almonds, chopped
Put sugar, glucose and water over high heat. Stir constantly until becomes syrupy and after that leave it to caramelise to golden. Once it starts caramelising this will go very quickly. If you will miss the golden part you will end up with burnt caramel like me:) It tastes bitter but......no but! - I will do better next time.
Carefully pour cream over the hot caramel when whisking (it will steam a lot). Add honey and return to boil for 1 min. Now add all the nuts. Spread it over a 18cm disc ideally on Silpat. Freeze.

HONEY ROULADE SPONGE 60x40cm
360g honey
90g butter
240g plain flour, sifted
9g cinnamon, sifted
3g ginger, sifted
2 large eggs (1 yolk, 1 egg)
7g bicarbonate soda
125ml hot water
Heat up butter with honey just until butter is melted. Break the egg and egg yolk and put aside. In a bowl mix together boiling water and soda. Add hot honey mix and whisk. I waited until it cooled down a little and then added the eggs (the original recipe didn't say when to add the eggs)
Add dry ingredients and gently mix until combined. Spread it on a baking pan and bake in 180C for about 15 min. The sponge should be firm to the touch and a bit coloured. Over baking will make it crispy which we don't want. Cool it down and cut 2 18cm discs.

 HONEY MOUSSE
100g egg yolks
225g honey
12g gelatine
65g water
400ml whipped cream
Whisk the egg yolks in an electric mixer until they are pale and thick. Boil the honey up to 112C. Bloom the gelatine. Reduce the speed of the mixer and drizzle honey down the side of the bowl to cook the egg yolks. Now increase the speed and continue whisking until the mixture is cool to the touch. Whip the cream until it reaches soft peaks. Melt the gelatine (in a microwave or over bain-marie). When the yolks are cool fold in the gelatine. Now fold in the cream. Use immediately.

ASSEMBLY
The cake is assembled upside down. Place the 22cm ring on a Silpat or parchment paper. Into the base of the ring pipe a layer of honey mousse (about 1/2"). Place the pistachio brulee disc into the centre by pressing gently. Take a nut filling disc and two sponge disc and make a sandwich out of them. Pipe more mousse over pistachio brulee and on the top of that, press gently 'sponge sandwich' forcing the mousse up.   Even all the edges ( I didn't and piped some mousse on the top of all that as well which made it very difficult to transport the cake. Plus it doesn't look clean at all)
For the glaze I went for white chocolate mirror glaze from great baking blog http://mandysbakingjourney.blogspot.co.uk/ .