May 20, 2024

I Love Argentina Alfajores Cake #TheCakeSliceBakers

This cake, the recipe says, is a love letter to Argentina.

It is based off of the country's national cookie (the alfajor): a shortbread-like sandwich cookie filled with dulce de leche--and sometimes dipped in chocolate or covered in meringue.

I'm lucky enough to have eaten a REAL Argentine alfajor. My pastor and his family lived there for years, and order alfajores at Christmastime. It was delicious, and even more special because I know they are like gold to the people who shared it.

There were several great choices for this month's Cake Slice Bake. Check out the links at the end of the post to see what the other lovely bakers chose!

I chose this cake because I'm ~~a glutton for punishment~~ always up for a challenge!

I kid...mostly.

Like any good love letter, this cake takes a bit of effort. It has cookie-like sponge layers, homemade dulce de leche, a dulce de leche Swiss meringue buttercream, and is topped with a dark chocolate ganache. And it's made with a vanilla bean, which is a real luxury.

The cake layers came together easily, and were pretty standard in method. The recipe involves what Mary Berry calls "the creamy method"--beating the sugar and butter before adding the liquids and flour mix. It uses all-purpose flour instead of cake flour, which results in a denser, more "cookie-like" cake.

The dulce de leche was a bit of a disappointment. You cook it for two hour on the stovetop, but the recipe called for a teaspoon of baking soda--which gave the caramel a kind of strange, metallic taste. Next time, I'll just use my favorite salted caramel recipe or melt some store-bought caramels with a bit of heavy cream. Or even a can of store-bought dulce de leche.

If you've never made Swiss meringue buttercream, it's also has more steps than your conventional American buttercream. Don't get me wrong--I love me some American buttercream. But meringue based buttercreams are silky, delicious, and not as sweet as other frostings.

For this dulce de leche buttercream, you mix egg whites and sugar over a double boiler, whip it into a glossy meringue, add your butter...then add in some caramel. Even with wonky caramel, the buttercream was tasty. So give this Alfajores Cake a try!

Just use a different caramel recipe ;)

I Love Argentina Alfajores Cake

From "The Cake Book" by Rebecca Firth

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through. This year it is The Cake Book: Beautiful Sweet Treats for Every Craving by Rebecca Firth. We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the links below to take you to each of our cakes. If you have a blog and are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The Cake Slice Bakers also have a new Facebook group called The Cake Slice Bakers and Friends. This group is perfect for those who do not have a blog but want to join in the fun and bake through this book.