Week 9, entremets. “Entremets” literally translates to “between servings”, and in pastries this typically refers to desserts composed of layers of mousse, cream, and biscuit. We first learned Feuillantine Choco Praliné, a layered dessert consisting of chocolate biscuit, feuillantine praliné, and praline chocolate mousse. First step, make the feuillantine praliné by mixing melted milk chocolate, hazelnut paste, house-made praliné, and fueilletine. If you haven’t heard of feuilletine, these are caramelized, praline-flavored crispy flakes that can provide a nice crunch to anything you add it to. I’m totally addicted to just eating these by the spoonful.
Above the layer of fueillantine praliné, top with praline chocolate mousse, and make desired patterns with a rake tool.
After letting the entremet set in freezer, spray it with a dark chocolate-cocoa butter mixture for a velvety finishing.
To decorate, dip hazelnuts in caramel to create caramelized hazelnuts.
Let the caramel drip to form long tails.
Depending on how much you cook your caramel, the color will look different. Obviously, the longer you cook the caramel, the darker it becomes.
Voila. This entremet is simple to make, and has all the right elements – the soft mousse, the crunchy fueillantine, the crowd-pleaser chocolate, and the aromatic hazelnuts.
Next, Forêt Noire, the classic black forest cake. A chocolate sponge cake soaked with kirsch syrup, topped with layers of chocolate and vanilla chantilly dotted with cherries.
The decoration of this cake requires tempering chocolate, which is heating and cooling chocolate to the right temperature so we can manipulate its shape. To do this, we melted the chocolate (either using the microwave or with a bain-marie), then cool it down by spreading it over the marble.
Simply put, melt chocolate at 55 °C, cool it down to 29°C, then bring it back up to 31°C.
At this point, the chocolate should crystallize perfectly.
Use a scrapper to form these chocolate cigarettes.
Decorate. I’m really not a fan of this old-fashioned decoration…but well, we all have to learn the classics before we can be creative.
Next, Mogador. To start, making a chocolate genoise biscuit and soak it with raspberry syrup. Then, pipe a swirl of raspberry jam on top of the biscuit.
Fill the mold with chocolate chantilly cream, smooth the top, and put in freezer to set.
When the chantilly is set, cover the top with a thin layer of white butter cream, then followed with a thin layer of raspberry glaze.
To unmold the cake, use a heat gun to warm up the ring, then lift carefully.
Pass leftover chocolate genoise through a sieve in order to create chocolate genoise crumbs.
Cover sides of the cake with chocolate genoise crumbs.
To finish, decorate with chocolate and fresh raspberries. Dot with glucose and gold leaves if desired.
Cross section. Yes there’s a lot of chocolate Chantilly cream there – strictly for chocolate lovers.
