One of my favorite cakes is, by definition, no cake at all.
The meringue cake is only a cake by technicality. It looks like a cake and cuts like a cake (albeit messily), so it lands into the cake category of confections. Only there’s no cake.
There’s filling, yes. Whipped cream. And there’s icing, sure. More whipped cream.
But the sustenance is meringue. Dry, crisp, airy rounds of baked meringue. No flour, no butter, only sugar and egg whites.
At this point most people would consider this cake to be like a pavlova, that flattened mound of meringue topped with a cloud of whipped cream and fruit. Sound familiar?
The layers make all the difference, however. I think the best way to eat a meringue cake is to not eat it. At least not right away. Let it sit in the fridge. Let the meringue soak up some of the cream and soften a little, because that’s when the world starts to shift. What was once dry and baked is now dewy and spongy, and you end up with this messy mix of crispy and chewy and soft and crunchy that’s more than the sum of its parts and it just makes you want to dance.
Talk about layered.
