Emirates Palace Cake with date sugar, cardamom, and mousse milk chocolate by Alexandre Thabard

When Parisian pastry chef Alexandre Thabard started working as Executive Pastry Chef at the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental Abu Dhabi, he decided to change many things. “An a la carte menu for the restaurants, I included gluten free and vegan options for our guests. I changed all the pastries in the cake shop making it with my own personality and little by little, I started to create desserts with local ingredients like camel milk ice cream.” Desserts such as Emirates Palace Cake, inspired by the architecture of the luxurious hotel.

Created with local flavors, it features a chocolate crunch, a date cookie, a cardamom cream and a milk chocolate mousse. “I use date sugar from Nascita in all my preparations for its link with local flavors and products, but also for its natural low glycemic index, containing nutrients such as vitamins and minerals. Its sweetening power doesn’t irritate the palate and doesn’t overpower it, so you can still smell the cardamom, date, and chocolate flavors”, he explains.

Emirates Palace Cake

Mousse milk chocolate

103 g cream
24 g date sugar Nascita
95 g egg yolk
275 g milk chocolate
490 g whipped cream
12 g gelatine

Cook the cream sugar with the egg yolk at 83 degrees, add the gelatine, mix with the chocolate with a hand blender at 40ºC, add the whipped cream (soft), and use.

Date sponge

225 g date paste
188 g water
125 g baking powder
50 g eggs
50 g Nascita date sugar
1 g oil
175 g T55 flour

Boil water and date paste. Add the baking soda until black color. Cool down. Whip egg and date sugar and oil. Add the date paste, finish with flour. 2 kg for 40×60 tray 180ºC for 20 minutes.

Creamy cardamom

279 g milk
279 g cream
56 g Nascita date sugar
120 g egg yolk
173 g dark chocolate
92 g milk chocolate
7 g cardamom

Heat the milk and cream with cardamom. Add the egg yolk with date sugar. Cook at 83ºC. Pour over the chocolate and mix.

Sablé cacao

156 g butter
125 g Nascita date sugar
2 g salt
236 g flour
7 g cacao powder

Mix together. Scrape and cook for 25 minutes at 145ºC.

Crunchy chocolate

60 g dark chocolate
18 g butter
170 g sablé cacao
1 g sea salt
50 g praline hazelnuts

Melt the butter and chocolate. Mix together.

Assembly

Start by spreading 180 g of the crunchy chocolate on a 13x13cm square, place a date sponge (2kg for one tray 60x40cm), pour 250 g of the creamy cardamom and place a sponge again on top. Freeze the insert, make the mousse, apply a thin layer of milk chocolate to the side of the mold, pour 500 g of the chocolate mousse and place the insert in the center.

Freeze and demold, pass the milk chocolate velvet over the cake and place the domes on top.