Raspberry Mousse Gateau

Chef's Gateau

A timeless patisserie staple, Raspberry Mousse Gateau is a classic cake-and-mousse collaboration whose flavor can be easily manipulated to suit your taste: chocolate, blueberry, passionfruit... whatever strokes your Buddha, my good people.

Stenciling Jaconde

We used a silpat with an indented pattern to create a decorative jaconde for the perimeter of said cake. Tulip paste colored with cocoa powder is layer into the indents, but any food color of your choice may be used if you prefer pastel to brown. If you haven't got one of them fancy $170(!) silpats you can go freehand with the designs, with pretty good results too.

Next, jaconde sponge is poured on to completely cover the tulip base. When baked it is turned over to reveal the patterns  and cut into strips and discs to build the cake base.

Jaconde, Raspberry Mousse, Glaze

A cake ring is lined with the jaconde and filled with raspberry mousse. This will go into the chill chest to set, before a shiny glaze of raspberry puree and gelatin is poured on top. And Voila! You have made cake.

Mini Berry

Reflections

I'm pleased with my jaconde. Initially going for a retro purple-green-choco theme, I somehow ended up with with a funky 70's sweatshirt design, which is cool, it fits the overall look anyway. Check out the reflection of my white chocolate curls on the glaze!

The gateau was light on account of it being 90% mousse i.e. 80% air, the jaconde provided structure and a little sweetness, the glaze a slight tart and some kick, and finally white chocolate which I find to be the perfect pairing for berries. This is one gateau I can easily polish off on my own.

Whimsical

Rainbow Swirls

Chocolate Croquembouche, White Chocolate Fudge

Chef's Croquembouche

Fields Of Fudge & Truffles

Righty-O, a pleasantly straight-forward class it will be today, so let's get a move on, shall we?

Fudgy Filigree

Retrieve your fudge from room temperature storage, slice into desired shape and pipe with chocolate your chosen designs. Some recipes suggest coating the fudge in chocolate but before you do that, refer to my precious Campaign Against Fudge  and you will note how alarmingly sweet these little nuggets already are, so any added sweetness will be strongly cautioned against.

Production Line, Minions Waiting To Line The Cone

Next dip the ganache-filled chocolate shells in melted chocolate (dark, milk and white) before coating them in a myriad of flavors (flaked almond, pistachios, desiccated coconut, cocoa powder, icing sugar or plain). This permutation of different ganache, shells, dips and coating with yield you...162 individual and unique truffles. Beautiful like the rainbow world we live in.

The truffles "glued" onto the cone structure with melted chocolate. Arranged in a cascading pattern or deliberate chaos, both will deliver stunning results.

Just In Time For Christmas

Rather then tie ribbons all over my croquembouche, I twirled it around for an elegant finish.

Fudged Up My Fudge

I should have come up with more elaborate designs but at times simplicity is best. Enjoy.

White Chocolate Fudge, Truffles

Orbs Of Chocolatey Goodness

A breezy mise en place for tomorrow's Croquembouche: a towering French celebration cake especially popular at weddings, traditionally made with profiteroles coated in caramel, which lends its resounding crunch to the name croque en bouche, 'crunch in the mouth'.

Croquembouche may be made with chocolate truffles, which keeps better than profiteroles and in my opinion a far wiser choice. Surely you're not getting hitched without chocolate?!?

Cooking & Settling Fudge

We also made fudge...ahh...erm...nah...I don't like fudge. *shakes head in disgust*. Not only do I find it way too sweet, it's so sticky that the overpowering sweetness lingers in your mouth and refuses to go away even after you've drowned 20 pints of water. Even then there will still be bits of it stuck on your teeth and you try to pry it out with your tongue for hours without success before it finally dissolve, but not without leaving you with a sore tongue and a mouthful rotten teeth. So...nah, I don't like fudge.

For those of youse who can not only stand the sweet confection but even enjoy it, here's what you do: boil sugar, glucose and cream until 117'C, add white chocolate and butter, mix and pour into moulds to set. Slice into tiny tiny portions before consuming, if you must.

 Piping Ganache

We made 3 different ganache for the truffles: dark chocolate coffee, milk chocolate kirsch, and white chocolate orange cointreau. Needless to say, flavor with coffee, kirsch and cointreau to your liking, as did I.

The ganaches are then piped into ready-made chocolate shells (what did I tell ya, it doesn't get any easier than this), sealed with tampered chocolate and set aside for tomorrow.

Witch's Hat

For the base we made a cone of chocolate, a shell really, but I made mine out of solid chocolate. With chocolate, you can go the whole hog.

My Chocolate Blossoms