Almond and hazelnut dacquoise

Come dessert time at a restaurant, if I see a dessert with the word "dacquoise" in it, there's a good chance I'm going to order it.  If it is also accompanied by the word "chocolate", then I am definitely going to order it.  Before I even knew what dacquoise meant, I realized that there's some element of crunch and nuts involved.  If we want to get specific, daquoise actually refers to a nut meringue (almond or hazelnut typically but could be other nuts as well) or it could be used to describe a dessert that has a component of nut meringue within.

My husband and I have a favorite Italian restaurant near our house that serves a hazelnut dacquoise dessert that I order every time we go (he has the tiramisu).  There's a separate chocolate section on the dessert menu  so you know this is the place for me.  And this particular dessert (I'm salivating as I think about it) is based on both hazelnut dacquoise and a praline croustillant (another nutty/crunchy creation) with what I think is chocolate mouse on top, which is then covered entirely by a thin coating of chocolate ganache.  There's some pistachio sauce drizzled around the plate and a sprinkling of raspberries, which admittedly, I skip.  This dessert is so good!

From what I can tell, a dacquoise (this nut meringue) is usually a layer within the components of a dessert - say, a cake.  Typically, it'll be layered between buttercream and/or ganache.  And I think it's that combination of crunch against creaminess that makes it work so well (the buttercream or ganache would keep it from getting to hard).  Here, instead of making large dacquoise layers for a cake, I pretty much made cookies.  Specifically, I wanted to serve them with ice cream - the homemade vanilla chocolate chip ice cream I made.

I couldn't decide between making hazelnut or almond dacquoise so I combined the two.  I played around quite a bit with a recipe for walnut dacquoise that I found from Martha Stewart.  I think it worked out well.  The dacquoise is not too hard or crispy and I particularly like the chewiness in the center.  Lightly toasting the nuts also brings out their flavor.  I'm not a huge fan of meringues but adding the nuts adds a huge amount of flavor (and some healthy fat that I embrace).