After a ridiculously successful Pick Your Own session, I found myself with nearly a kilogramme of black currants to find a use for. I was thinking about a mousse cake, but because I've been watching Bake Off - The Professionals, I thought I'd turn up the pressure and have a go at an entremet.
The cake had a coffee genoise sponge base, a milk chocolate "mousse" (I'll explain the inverted commas momentarily), caramelised almonds (as a substitute for a feuilletine layer), a blackcurrant mousse topped with a blackcurrant glaze.
It wasn't half bad. It had a very long flavour. My mouth was constantly excited with each bite. The crunch of the almonds was an excellent foil to the luxurious mousse. The blackcurrant mousse and coffee cake combination is both complex and complementary. The bitterness of the coffee contrasting with the sweet fruit. The chocolate layer helped to seamlessly transition from one to the other. The glaze was intense and provide a real hit of fruitiness.
The only bit that didn't really work was the chocolate mousse. This was supposed to be a ganache, but had added egg yolks and sugar. I think the problem was that I didn't whisk the egg yolks and sugar together enough to form a sabayon, so when combined with the melted chocolate and cream, it didn't really for a mousse.
It's a very complicated recipe with many components, that I ended up making over night. I also wished I had a ring mould rather than a springform tin. De-moulding would have been much easier! I'm actually quite pleased with myself.
I'll give the chocolate ganache another bash and see if I can improve it. Maybe this is the start of an obsession with multi-layered desserts...
