Mousse au Chocolat

Chictastic day for you all!

Today is the day we have all been waiting for. It is time to reveal the best accomplishment I have achieved so far. This is the chocolate mousse cake! I apologize beforehand for the pictures since I was too exited while baking. Therefore some of them might be a bit fuzzy or I don't have pictures of every single step.

As far as I'm concerned, this cake is the most amazing thing I have eaten for awhile. It is perfect for a more fancier occasion but still simple enough to bake when you're hungry for something sweet! Even my brother asked if I could bake a new cake for his name day on next week. Can't say no to that!

There's a lot of steps in this one but don't be scared. It's actually very simple to make so here we go..

Dough inside:

1/2 dl (0,2 cup) Flours

1dl (0,4 cup) Cocoa powder

2 1/3 tbsp Corn starch

8 Egg yolks

1dl (0,4 cup) sugar

5 Egg whites

Filling:

1dl (0,4 cup) Blackcurrant jam

Mousse:

4dl (1,7 cups) Whipped cream

250g (9 oz) Dark Chocolate

5 Egg yolks

1/2 dl Sugar

Decoration:

Cocoa powder

Berries

+ 24ccm (9,5 inch) cake tin 

Here's actually everything you need. Not that much of ingredients, huh?

Okay, begin by covering a baking tray with a greaseproof paper. Then sift all of the, flours, cocoa powder and corn starch together into a bowl. You'll need 2 another bowls also since you'll froth the  egg yolks with half of that sugar (1/2 dl, 0,2 cup). Then again the egg whites in another one with rest of that sugar (1/2dl, 0,2 cup).

After all this, you're supposed to have 3 bowls in front of you; flour bowl, egg yolk bowl and egg white bowl. Start by carefully mixing the egg yolks into the egg whites and finally adding the flours into the mix carefully again. Awesome! 

Feel free to spread the dough onto the baking tray smoothly. Bake the dough in 180°C (350F) for 8mins in the middle of the oven. Prepare another greaseproof paper on the table. Spread some sugar on it and when the dough on the tray has cooled down a little, flip it on the sugared paper. This dough is actually the same recipe if you'd be making a Swiss roll. Therefore we're moving on with same steps on here. Before you take off the greaseproof paper which is on top now, here's a tip I learned from my mom. Get the dishcloth wet, prefer cold water, and swipe it over the paper on the dough a couple of times. It helps it to get off easier. :) Cut off 2 circle pieces for the cake. Make sure they're a little bit smaller than the cake tin.

I know, there's a lot of leftover dough but don't worry. We, for instance, ate it with ice cream. It was just perfect combination!

I used my mixers lid to get a perfect circle, though it was big enough to get pieces small enough for the cake. :D Of course, this part of the cake is going to be covered with chocolate mousse so it doesn't really matter if they're perfect or not.

When the greaseproof paper is off, you can prepare the cake tin. Just if you're wondering, my tin is a little bit broken so I have to keep the edge closed with some duct tape. Anyways, cut a piece of greaseproof paper to fit the bottom of the cake tin. If you can see from the picture, I have used a strip of plastic to help me when taking the edge off. It also gives a clean form for the cake. I have bought mine from a special baking store but you can also make you own from stiff plastic. Just make sure its high enough so the mousse isn't all over the cake tin and table when you're pouring that. I usually dont tape it to stay in form. Just making sure that when I'm pouring the filling or whatnot that the strip stays against the edge of the cake tin.

Place the first layer on the bottom of the cake tin. At this point I was wondering if the circles should've been bigger or not. I would say that this is the minimum size since there would be too much of the mousse for the one piece of cake otherwise. Then we continue by taking the jam and spreading it all over the first layer. I left some space on the edges so when you're placing the second layer the jam won't come out. Place the 2nd layer on the jam and lightly press it down so it will be compact. After that, it's time for the delicious mousse!

Start by whipping 3 1/2 dl (1 1/2 cups) of whipped cream. When you're done with that put it in the fridge for later. Melt the chocolate in water bath. I always cheat on this. I have never learned to melt chocolate in this way so I just use microwave for this. So I promise, my chicsters, that now on I will melt chocolate only by water bath! Microwave is not so reliable for that.

Oh, let's keep going, shall we? Prepare another water bath for the rest of the ingredients. Whip the egg yolks, sugar and rest of the whipped cream (1/2dl, 0,2 cup) on the water bath. Keep heating it until it gets thicker. So there's 3 different bowls in front of you again: chocolate bowl (cup in my case), egg mix bowl and whipped cream bowl from the fridge. Mix some whipped cream and egg mix into the chocolate. It gets a little bit thinner so you can pour it into the egg mix bowl next. For the final step, mix carefully the whipped cream in it.

Pour it instantly into the cake tin and put the cake with the cake tin into the freezer. The original recipe said to keep it there for over night or even longer. Of course we didn't want to wait for that long! I ha it in there for 4h and at that point it was solid enough to be cut. If you keep it there over night or longer, let it melt for 4h before serving. Decorate the cake by sifting some cocoa powder on top of the cake and add some berries on it too. I would say the raspberries would go perfectly with this one. ;) As the final step, take the strip of plastic off from the side by pulling carefully.

My cake got a ugly stamp on it when I covered it before putting into the freezer. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of decoration since I didn't decorate it in any way. It's almost winter so it's basically impossible to get fresh berries from anywhere so yea.. For my surprise, I didn't have a single problem with this. Everything went steady and smoothly from the beginning to the end and everybody just adored this, including me. We ordered this cake "Marble chocolate cake" for my graduation party and I can honestly say that this cake beat the marble one 6-0. The fact that there's a surprise inside of this cake is just amazing. It totally changes the texture in there and the slightly sour jam inside just blows your mind! Totally 12/10 for this one! Hopefully you'll try this at home and have absolutely chictastic time while munching this!

PS. This is perfect cake for freezing it up for later occasion!