I ate meringue cake for the first time at my wedding. It was made by my mother's eternal friend Leposava Lepojka Velimanović, a professor of chemistry already retired at the time. The cake was as white as a cloud, all covered in tiny pearl beads – by far the prettiest of all the others.
Bezejka, as we called it, got the status of a special cake in our house, the one that is prepared only and exclusively once a year, on a big occasion, which means for Mina's birthday. My mom made it according to Lepojka's recipe, but in her own way. And so until ten years ago.
Now all that is left of the bezejka is the recipe, which I would like to share, should I not save it. I am transcribing both versions, Lepojkin's and my mother's, as they were dictated to me. Both are authorized.
This is Lepoykin.
Before you start making the meringue cake, read the entire recipe in order to organize it in time and measure everything well.
You make crusts and cream. The crust has two, and the cream has three: brown, white and yellow.
You need to get: 10 eggs, 300 g of hazelnuts, 250 g of butter, about half a liter of milk, two bags of white whipped cream, two bags of vanilla cream, one tablespoon of flour, 560 g of powdered sugar, that's the sugar for the crusts and the sugar for the cream you need another 6 tablespoons plus more to taste. You also need a lemon.
Before you start, prepare the hazelnut. Bake it in the oven until golden brown, then when it's baked, peel off the skin. Then grind it, ground hazelnut is used. You will put it in the brown cream later.
Then you make the crusts.
First, prepare a baking sheet. Grease it well, then cover it with parchment paper. Press it well on the baking sheet and sprinkle flour thinly over it and spread it evenly.
You make each crust separately.
For each one, beat five egg whites (If you read the recipe before you started making the cake, then you will remember that you separate their egg yolks into two bowls: seven in one, and three in the other.) with 280 grams of powdered sugar and add juice to it of half a lemon. Pour this mass into a tray and spread it evenly. Put the tray in the oven. First at medium temperature for 10 minutes, then at the lowest temperature to dry for 60 minutes. Do not open the oven until the crust is golden brown. You will see, first it will grow, and then it will dry. Check that it is dry with a toothpick.
Now you are making creams, first the brown one. You make it in two stages.
For the first one, beat 7 egg yolks (which you previously separated in a bowl) and 6 spoons of powdered sugar, one spoon of flour and 400 mg of milk. You cook the cream like pudding. When cool, add those roasted ground hazelnuts and mix well.
For the second one, you take the three egg yolks from the second bowl, 250 g of butter and powdered sugar to taste. I don't like sweets, but you do as you like. You beat especially the butter until it is foamy, and especially the egg yolks with sugar. You mix it all with the cream so that it comes together nicely. Your brown cream is ready. Let's move on.
For the white cream, whip two white creams, and then for the yellow cream, two vanilla creams. You beat them with milk, not water. I think the bag says 100 mg of milk, and I always put a little less, to make the cream thicker. Now you have all three creams.
The ending follows. You find a nice tray in which to serve the meringue cake to your guests. You put one crust on it and start layering the creams. First brown, then white over it, leave the part you will need for decoration, and finally yellow. You put the second crust on top of all that and then decorate with the rest of the white cream. You can do that as you want.
When you're done, put it in the fridge. There, that's all.
When my mom made a meringue cake for the first time, and it was for Mina's first birthday, she trembled over Lepojka's recipe so she wouldn't accidentally make a mistake. In the end, everything couldn't have been better, everyone asked for repeats, my mom was satisfied, but she announced that she wouldn't make it again because it is very messy. "You dry two crusts, you whip three creams - that's a lot of work. And there is a lot to measure, both in grams and in spoons," she said. And that was it.
Somewhere before Mina's next birthday, when it was time to plan what we would do for the guests, she said: "We will make bezeka, but without the crust. The barks will be pussies".
I don't have my mother's recipe and I'm citing it from memory, but it's guaranteed to be reliable.
"All you have to do is buy ready-made diapers, they are sold in every convenience store. It is better to buy more, I bought three packs, because they are fragile and break easily. Be sure to buy small pacifiers because the large ones have to be cut in half, which is a hassle.
You line them up on a tray, thickly, and that's your first crust. Do you understand? No oven! Over them you arrange the three creams according to Lepojka's recipe, and over them, again the pudding. That's your second crust instead. You insert them into the cream slowly, and upside down, with the tip down, so that your cake ends up with a flat surface, as if you had put on a crust. Then you coat them with the rest of the white cream, decorate, and that's it!
Well, yes: be sure to try the pudding to see how sweet it is, then determine the amount of sugar in the brown cream based on that. So that your cake is not too sweet."
Both variants are delicious, as the kids would say. If you like to bake crusts and feel them as something crunchy under your palate, choose the first one. And whoever does not think that a cake is not a cake if it is not made according to the original recipe, plus prefers cream to crust, let him choose another one. Because the cream here is not used to mold the cream, but to receive it, to join and unite with it, and to create together a taste that is enjoyment.
