The cursed mousse

After last year’s profiterole disaster, this year I decided to make a cake for New Year’s pudding. Never mind that my family’s actual get-together was on the 30th and not the 31st. It’s the thought that counts, right?

I recently tried out a vegan chocolate cake recipe which I ended up loving for it’s fudginess and taking me back to my childhood (nothing like a good Hershey’s Chocolate cake). Should have been a walk in the park. It wasn’t. I got ambitious. Why not add a layer of orange mousse? Hell, throw some chocolate ganache on top while I’m at it.

There must be some kind of curse on me for making holiday desserts. I had to attempt the mousse a total of four times, two of which were successful, to make enough for a nice layer to go on top of the cake.

Lessons learned?

1. Always chill the cream and shake it in its container to make sure it has a homogeneous texture (I never had an issue with this in the UK, but then again single and double cream are readily available everywhere, unlike Honduras).
2. When whipping the cream, add sugar later rather than sooner.
3. Powdered gelatin needs to be sprinkled gradually while stirring the liquid to avoid massive clumps.

The cake

The Pretty Bee’s recipe is originally gluten-free, but I used plain flour because I love gluten. Note: my cake was not fully vegan either since there is no such thing as vegan chocolate in Honduras. We love our dairy.

Ordinarily, one should probably use a springform cake tin for this kind of dessert, or acetate sheets to create a mold around the cake at the very least. I had neither. Thankfully, necessity is the mother of invention. I used some leftover manila paper my mom bought to cook the ham joint in. I taped wax paper to one side, nice and tight, and made a mold of sorts around my cake. It looked ridiculous but it worked.

Reminds me of those post surgery collars for dogs.

The mousse

My first attempt was a Tastemade recipe, which ended up looking like scrambled eggs (not going to link it as it was a massive fail). To avoid wasting ingredients I searched and settled for a simpler recipe with less ingredients. I found this handy video by HidaMari Cooking on Youtube (videos are always better when making something for the first time).

It was very easy, yet I still managed to make a couple of rookie mistakes (see lessons learned above). However, once I had a decent amount of mousse, I poured it on the cake and left it to set in the fridge.

Evidence of two separate mousse attempts.

In the future I’d probably add orange zest or orange extract to make the orange flavour more intense. I’ll also probably experiment with a vegetarian alternative to gelatin.

The ganache

Ganache is easy. Heat cream, pour on chocolate, chocolate melts, done. However, after the mousse fiasco I decided to study up on ganache before doing it, just in case. Kitchen Conundrums provides a very detailed explanation for making ganache for different purposes. Since I wanted to pour it over the cake, I initially used a 2:1 cream to chocolate ratio, but it was super runny and I couldn’t see it thickening much more in the fridge so I added more chocolate while it was still warm enough to melt. Once it reached a consistency I liked, I mixed in about a tablespoon of butter to make it shiny. I let it chill in the fridge until I was happy it wouldn’t just slide off the cake.

I poured from the middle and tilted the cake around, trying to cover the top and get it to drip a bit down the sides.

Pool of chocolate not visible.

Sadly, a massive pool of chocolate formed on one side. Trying to do damage control, I poured chocolate all over and then scraped the sides for a sort of naked cake look. I then carefully added back some drips.

Grunge look totally intentional.

Next time, runnier ganache might be better. It would probably cover the cake faster so no need to pour as much. Darker chocolate would also be loads better, too, in terms of taste and looks.

Takeway

It would be nice to attempt a fully vegan version of this but I’ll wait until I go back to the UK for that. Also, reign in the ambition just a tad.