Tuesdays with Dorie: Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

Wow. Seriously WOW. Andrea of Andrea In The Kitchen chose this amazing concoction and I'm so glad she did. I was a little daunted by this recipe as I don't make meringues very often and I find white chocolate very overrated. But boy was I pleasantly surprised. In fact I think this may be my favourite TWD recipe of the 47 I've made so far!

Basically what you have is an almond and coconut meringue with white chocolate ganache and roasted pineapple. I explained it in just those words to our friends who were over for lunch and I sounded like a contestant on Masterchef bringing their invention test dish to the judges. (Are there any other Aussies totally addicted to this show?!)

Anyway, I did have a few problems making this, mostly because I was incredibly tired and I didn't start making it until dinner time. Big mistake.

The drama started when I had made the meringue and as I came to spread it on the trays realised I was out of baking paper. N offered to get some more but I was in meltdown mode with Oscar and didn't want him to leave. I stupidly decided to go with greaseproof lunch wrap instead. I'm sure you can guess what happened. It superglued itself to the base of the meringue. HUGE thanks to N who spent probably a good half hour picking off the paper in teeny tiny little pieces!

I managed to avert a catastrophe with the baking. I always bake using the convection setting on our microwave as our only other option is a dodgy 30 year electric with broken seal (made worse by the fact that the last time we used it the loose end of the seal was actually inside the oven touching the element and we nearly burned the house down). While the recipe called for baking at 100 degrees our oven has preset temps of either 70 or 130. I went with 130 and only belatedly realised maybe they wouldn't take 3 hrs to cook at a higher temperature! I checked them at 2hrs and pulled them out immediately.

I'm a little bit funny about white chocolate. What with it not actually being chocolate at all and tasting sickly sweet. This time I went with Green & Blacks Organic and hallelujah! That stuff is dangerous and we ate our leftover half a block while prepping dinner.

The taste test ...

Oh. My. God. I think I have now found my go-to dinner party dessert! The contrast between the chewy, slightly crispy meringue, smooth as silk ganache and bite of the pineapple was sensational. Rich but not sickly, this is one awesome recipe. I did just a half batch and it made 6 generous serves. We had barely finished eating when we tried to think of the next occasion I could make this for. Definitely no leftovers with this one.

Make sure you check out Andrea's blog for the recipe!