Artist's Palate: Salvador Dali

Timbale Elysée Lasserre

The imperfect genius of Dali was to take the Surrealists's Freudian fixation with the unconscious mind and focus it on the naughty bits in his own psyche to make art. So it is fitting that this recipe for The Museum of Modern Art's Artists' Cookbook should have been so gloriously globular.

Think of it as Dali's conflicted cake - a fruity, creamy treat laden with booze, desire and irrational fears, and topped with spun sugar.

Serves 8

For the dough:

100g flour

100g sugar

1 egg

50g butter, melted

vanilla to taste

For the timbale:

Genoise cake

Kirsch syrup

Vanilla ice cream

Fresh raspberries or strawberries

Gooseberry jelly

Whipped cream

Spun sugar made of 200g of sugar and 40g of glucose

Kirsch

Mix dough ingredients together. Roll out dough and make thin circles by cutting with a floured glass. Bake on a buttered and floured cookie sheet at 200C. Remove pastry and place while hot on a dome shaped soup ladle or ramekin and let cool. Shells should be dome shaped.

To make the timbale, soak genoise in kirsch syrup and cover bottom of pastry crusts with layer of the cake. Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream, over with fruit. Add a tablespoon of jelly mixed with kirsch. Cover the inside border of the pastry shells with a piping of whipped cream. Cover whole timbale with a ‘cage’ of spun sugar in a lattice work design. Serve.

Note: This recipe is not for the amateur chef!

Recipe taken from The Museum of Modern Art ‘Artists’ Cookbook, by Madeleine Conway and Nancy Kirk

11 June 2009 | Lifestyle