Bizcocho Dominicano

Ingredients

• 250 g soft butter
• 400 g sugar, plus 300 g for the meringue
• 6 eggs, separated
• 380 g plain flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 200 ml milk
• zest and juice of 1 orange
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 300 g pineapple, cooked down to a thick jam
• 120 ml water, for the sugar syrup
• juice of ½ lime

Method

1. Cream the butter and sugar a long time

   Beat the butter and sugar for a full eight minutes until pale and almost white. A Dominican bizcocho is famously light and it comes from here, not from the baking powder.

   8 min

2. Yolks in one at a time

   Beat in the yolks one by one, waiting for each to disappear. Keep the whites — half go into the cake, half into the suspiro.

3. Dry ingredients

   Sift the flour with the baking powder and salt.

4. Alternate wet and dry

   Fold in the flour and the milk, orange and vanilla in three alternating additions, beginning and ending with flour. This keeps the batter from splitting, and a split batter bakes dense.

5. Whites folded in last

   Whisk three of the whites to soft peaks and fold them through. Bake in two lined 20 cm tins at 175°C for thirty-five minutes.

   35 min

6. Pineapple filling

   Cook the pineapple down with a little sugar until thick enough to hold a line, and cool it completely before it goes near the cake.

   20 min

7. Suspiro is an Italian meringue

   Boil the remaining sugar with the water to 118°C, then pour it in a thread onto the remaining whites while whisking, add the lime juice and beat until the bowl is cool. This is what makes suspiro hold for a day in Caribbean heat — a plain meringue would weep by lunchtime.

   10 min

8. Fill and cover

   Sandwich the cooled cakes with the pineapple and cover the whole thing in suspiro, working it into peaks. Assemble on the day; it is a cake meant to be eaten, not kept.