Yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake - Daring Bakers March 2011

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

I loved the recipe source for this one: "Jamie found this recipe on a piece of yellowed paper in her dad’s collection of clipped out and hand-written recipes from the 1970’s, no source, no date, and she tried the recipe and it was brilliant!" This reminded me of my late Gram's recipe box. My mum is now the custodian and she has photocopied some of them for me, and I hope I'll inherit the originals one day.

The recipe calls for a sweet, buttery, yeast-risen dough, which is filled with meringue and assorted fillings and then rolled and formed into a wreath. The recipe makes 2 cakes and the hosts said we could easily halve it, but I decided to divide the dough in half and make a sweet version and a savoury version.

For the sweet one I used Jamie's filling of pecan, cinnamon and chocolate. The dough was simple to make and rose nicely. I found it tricky to roll and shape the meringue-filled dough, so my wreath was somewhat misshapen.

I also made the mistake of following the recipe literally and "rolling" the dough with a rolling pin. As I should know from making pizza, that is no way to love your dough. The end result was a cake that was a little drier and chewier than it should have been.

When it came time for the savory version, I carefully and gently stretched the dough rather than rolling it and the difference was amazing. The savory scrolls were perfectly light, moist and soft. I could hardly believe that they each came from the same batch of dough.

I made two different savory fillings, just using what I had on hand. One filling was olive and tomato, the other was pesto, potato and haloumi. I also went with "cinnamon-roll" style, which I much preferred to the wreath. Obviously there was no meringue in the savory version so it was easier to work with. I also wonder if this affected the texture in a positive way?

Thank you Ria and Jamie for sharing this interesting and versatile recipe with us. I can't wait to see what all the clever Daring Bakers came up with.