Christmas left-overs January 11, 2010
Posted by croissantandbagel in Uncategorized.add a comment
I ended up cooking so much at Christmas (and as a result eating so much sugar) that I’ve kind of given up desserts and attempted to take up exercising. Funnily enough that hasn’t been much of a success. It is also just too hot to cook anything other than what I need to live. In 43 degrees it is just easier to pull out the tub of ice cream. Yes, I do need chocolate and ice cream to live.
That said, these were one of the desserts I made at Christmas and I actually took a photo because I was so amazed at the fact that it worked. I don’t have a thermometer, so my tempering involved asking random family members and Phil to guess whether the chocolate was at 32 degrees. My disorganisation meant that I was still doing it at noon on Christmas day, so my aunt arrived in the middle and was rather dubious about my attempt. The problem with that kind of disorganisation is that if it doesn’t work out, everyone knows about it. Luckily, I think they look kind of cute.
They are actually a layer of chocolate cake, topped with a layer of vanilla bean mousse studded with fresh raspberries. I left the mousse to set in the molds, then chopped up plastic overhead sheets, spread them reasonably thickly with vaguely tempered chocolate and then wrapped them around the mousse cakes. I left the chocolate to set in the fridge before pulling the plastic off. The plastic comes off easily but it can be tricky to get a start without breaking it. Next time I’d leave a bit of an edge of plain plastic that I could start pulling from. I topped them off with berries sprinkled with icing sugar and a Christmassy ribbon. Without the chocolate, the mousse, raspberry and cake combination tasted kind of like trifle, anyway they were yummy.
I also continued my quest for the perfect macaron, and while the chocolate and matcha ones were a bit of a failure the strawberry ones were good! Smooth tops, egg shell crust with softer middle. I filled them with buttercream flavoured with fresh strawberry puree and a bit of raspberry coulis.
