New Year's cake!

A couple of days before New Year's Day here in Greece it is a tradition to bake the Vassilopita, a round cake.
We write the year with sugar or nuts and in it we put a coin and whoever gets it in their piece, then will have a lucky year!

Usually this cake is an orange or citrus cake, but you can do anything you like, any decorations you want. You can even make it like tsoureki, sort of brioche / challah bread.

This year I made a chocolate cake and decided to cover it with coffee flavoured meringue. For the numbers I baked individual meringues.

I wanted a fluffy look!
Then placed the numbers on top.

I simply piped the numbers with a star tip and made a few more meringues. I dusted them with cocoa before using them.

I had some left over meringue, so I baked sugar cookies and decorated them with little meringue kisses!

I preheated the grill and placed them under it for a couple of minutes, because I wanted to brown the meringue, but my hand torch was not working.....

Nice, right?

P.S.: My little girl got the lucky coin !!!