Chocolate Mousse Cake! I was now armed and prepared to tackle a culinary feat which only the bravest will face (on a sweltering day). With the A/C cranked up to prevent any unwanted collapsing of said mousse, I set to work. Chocolate Mousse Cake is a multi-step process. I began with the cake base. For what it will grow up to be, the deceptively simple chocolate cake, which is no more than an inch high when baked looked rather sad and mundane as it cooled. But, already, the lovely smell of baked chocolate was filling the air with promises of things to come!
With the cake base done, I set about to the cream---literally and figuratively. This is the heart of a chocolate mousse cake. There's no getting around it! You mess this up, you might as well just pack up and call it a day! The fact that the ingredients are so costly makes a do-over something only the rich can afford to risk. So, sending up a quick prayer, I put the egg yolks, sugar, and salt in the mixer and whisked them up. Heated milk followed shortly after. Meanwhile, the dark chocolate was melting, and a pot of boiling water was on stand-by awaiting its critical part in the play.
Now for the aerobic exercise. The recipe called for eight vigorous minutes of constant whisking over the simmering water. Once you put that bowl over the hot water, you have to be ready to go, go, go! There's no stopping now. If you do, you risk cooking the delicate eggs yolks rather than creating a creamy custard. I whisked until I could whisk no more, and then I changed hands. "cook, stirring, until custard is 160°F (70°C) and thick enough to coat back of spoon." That's what the lady said! It wasn't happening. Horror of horrors! The custard was curdling! Ignore it! came the little voice in my head that often saves me from despairing too quickly. So, I forged ahead and beat that custard until the buzzer went off. The result was not the luscious, smooth, satiny custard I'd expected, but something between baby cereal and cottage cheese. That's o.k., Heather. It's not over yet! I encouraged myself.
Into the custard went the rum flavour, the vanilla, the melted chocolate and that amazing secret ingredient without which no mousse could claim existence: the gelatin! When it was all deliciously cool, I added whipped cream and it all came together. The sorry-looking custard became something almost divine with the addition of that whipped cream. It was miraculous! The mousse was complete and I think even Martha Stewart would agree that it was perfect.
But a Chocolate Mousse Cake is a drab little, half-done thing, without the final addition: the ganache! Ganache is one of those lovely things that the French decided we cannot live without. It's post-revolutionary because if it had been invented in the days of the guillotine, it's creator would certainly have been beheaded. The thing is simply too decadent for common life! Funny how such a simply made thing can be so complete, so irresistable in itself. All you need to do is choose your very best chocolate (I used Swiss) and pour over it heated, bubbly, heavy (ie. whipping) cream. Within seconds, the chocolate starts to collapse in the bowl. A few deft swirls of a wire whip will turn a heterogeneous soup into the silkiest, creamiest mixture you've ever seen. I cooled this beauty, and then swept it across the set mousse---which, by this time, had been applied in two layers inside a spring form pan. The one inch chocolate cake, cut in two and filled with mousse, had become what it was meant to be: three inches of luscious Chocolate Mousse Cake!
The only thing harder than making a Chocolate Mousse Cake is waiting to eat it. We're having it tonight as the crowning glory to my brother's 25th birthday. It was his very special request, so I'm crossing my fingers that it tastes as good as it looks. If you'd like to try out this delectable recipe yourself, I got it on the Canadian Living website. Give it a try and let me know what you think! P.S. The image is courtesy of http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ .