Last weekend was my birthday, so I made myself a cake. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you might know that every year, I make this Marble Cheesecake. It’s delicious, but since it’s Filipino Food Month over here, I decided to make something different: Sans Rival.
I remembered this cake that my mom used to get now and again when I was little. I hadn’t had it in ages– my younger sister doesn’t remember ever having it at all– but I looked up some recipes and decided to give it a go.
Sans Rival is a Filipino dessert that is decidedly French in origin. Layers of daquoise (a meringue made with nuts) are sandwiched together with French buttercream. While French daquoise is traditionally made with almonds, this is made with cashews. Once all the layers are assembled, buttercream is used to frost the entire thing, and then it is adorned with more cashews. Since I had never made this before, I consulted a lot of recipes but followed this one by To Food With Love most closely.
