BMW M3 Bear (Rehrücken)

For his birthday, my boyfriend traditionally gets a cake (called Rehrücken, "deer's back" in German) in the shape of a teddy bear - ever since his parents got the bear mould in the US and his mother found out that one Rehrücken recipe fits exactly into the mould.

In the last years, the honour of baking the cake fell to me, however I'll still need to practice for a while as I still have big issues with getting the bear out of the mould! This year, we had M-Bear, matching the M3 that I rented for the day in the BMW World - which I can greatly recommend by the way!

Ingredients:

120 g dark chocolate

8 egg whites

8 egg yolks

170 g sugar

140 g butter

170 g ground almonds

70 g breadcrumbs

butter, flour/breadcrumbs for the mould

Decorations:

150 g chocolate

Smarties

Energy: 369 kcal per serving at 12 servings

Preparation:

Grease the mould with butter, add flour or breadcrumbs and put the prepared mould into the fridge or even freezer. This year, my method of choice was only butter without flour (because last year's bear had a slight flour crust when he finally came out of the mould) with subsequent cooling in the fridge (as there was no room in the freezer). 
Okay, now for the batter:

Melt the chocolate (baine marie or microwave set on 50%) and let it cool a bit. Whip the egg whites to snow. Beat the butter with sugar and add the egg yolks. Pour in the chocolate and mix it in. Add breadcrumbs, almonds and egg white snow and use a spatula to carefully mix the batter. 

Pour the batter into the prepared mould and smooth the surface. Bake at 190°C for about 45 minutes, test with a skewer.

In order to coax the bear out, I usually need a combination of cold wraps around the mould, a bath in cold water (the mould including the bear can swim!) and a lot of prodding and pushing at the margins. Stephan's Mom's hint for next year was to line the mould with a thick layer of butter and add breadcrumbs - I will try that next year!

We also had a little accident with the transfer to the transportation platter, as you can see - but that could be covered quite nicely with the chocolate decorations!

While riding the M3 Coupé, the poor bear was sliding to and fro within his transportation platter and annoyed the driver. At the end of the day, the bear even looked as if it had been in a traffic accident!

And this is the bear gallery of the last years. To the left, the 2008 original baked by Stephans mother, in the middle the 2010's Dr. Bear and to the right, the hottest bear chick of 2011...