Torta setteveli

Recipe from The Great British Bake Off

For my birthday, I decided to take on a challenge and bake Prue’s Totra Setteveli (seven veils). It’s a massive seven layered chocolate and hazelnut cake that features génoise sponge, chocolate hazelnut praline, hazelnut bavarois, more sponge, more bavarois, chocolate mousse, and a chocolate mirror glaze. Both the bavarois and mirror glaze are totally new to me.

As experienced by u/wpm on reddit the recipe has a few issues, but overall I’m really happy with my execution and the final product. Overall, it took me around 6 hours, without feeling too rushed.

My notes for next time:

• The sugar for the praline paste needs to be brought quite a bit hotter before adding the nuts. Following the recipe, the sugar crystalized instantly and didn’t develop any color.
• I couldn’t get my mirror glaze up to the recommended temperature of 103℃, so I stopped before the base started burning. The recipe doesn’t indicate what temperature to cool to before pouring. I dropped to about 42℃, which worked well. I could have used about double the amount, like wpm said. I wasn’t able to cover the full cake, but the thickness seemed good.