Sweet Love's Dance ~ Chocolate Meringue Cake

This is an adapted "Autumn Meringue" cake, which is a classic french cake, distinctive in that it involves no actual cake. For the gluten free set...lots of love, no gluten.  :-)

There are 3 parts.  Each part by itself is simple and wonderful. The results of combining them are glorious.  Definitely worth a try.

Part 1:  3 Meringue Discs (I made chocolate discs, these form the "cake" part of the cake)
Part 2:  Chocolate Mousse (I purposely made a "no egg" mousse as I was feeding small children.  Worked beautifully.  This is the "filling" part of the cake)
Part 3:   Chocolate Ganache (this is the icing on the cake)

Sweet Mary's Meringue Recipe:

4 egg whites
1 pinch Cream of Tartar (helps stabilize the meringue, not needed if you are good at whipping. I was concerned about piping it into a disc, so I added the tartar)
1 cup sugar
1/4 Dark Chocolate Cocoa Powder (I used dutch processed)

Place egg whites and cream of tartar in a mixing bowl, whip at high speed until soft peaks form, slowly add in the sugar and whip until stiff peaks form.  Gently fold in the cocoa powder using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, careful not to break the meringue.

I made 3 nine inch discs as I wanted to assemble the cake in a 9 inch spring form pan.  I used the removable bottom round from the spring form and traced around it 3 times on parchment paper.  Filled a piping bag with the meringue and piped the discs starting with the outer rim working towards the center.  I piped using a size 10 tip but I think next time I will just cut a larger hole at the tip of the bag. I think a thicker meringue layer adds better texture to the cake.

Bake the meringues at 250 for 2 hours.  Then turn oven off, leave light on and let cool in oven for 6-8 hours (I let mine rest overnight)

Finished Meringues

Eggless Chocolate Mousse

This recipe is great for those that are immune compromised, pregnant or feeding young children or if you simply just shy away from raw eggs

I modified an Alton Brown recipe.  It is basically an awesome stabilized whipped cream recipe. It was so fun, so easy and the results were so excellent, I think I will stabilize all my whipped cream fillings this way.  Yay (thanks Alton)

12 oz bag/chopped Bittersweet Chocolate (I used 60% cacao)
3 oz strong coffee
1 TBSP Irish Cream
4 TBSP Butter
1 TS unflavored gelatin
1 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Melt together chocolate, butter, Irish cream, and coffee in a double boiler or in a glass bowl fitted  snugly on top of a pot of simmering water.  Remove from heat and cool.

Bloom gelatin in a metal pot, with 1/4 cup of whipping cream for 10 minutes (sprinkle gelatine into cold cream and let sit, do not stir), on low low low heat, warm gelatin until dissolved, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and add to cooled melted chocolate mixture.

Whip 1 1/2 cups of cream at high speed until stiff peaks from.  Add 1/4 of the whipped cream to the chocolate mixture.  Fold in the remaining whipped cream in two batches, using 1/2 of the remaining whipped cream at a time.  Let chill for 1 hour.

Chocolate Ganache

1 cup heavy whipping cream
12 oz bag of semi sweet chocolate chips

Heat whipping cream in a sauce pan to a gentle boil, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat, add chocolate chips and stir until melted and fully incorporated.  Let cool

ASSEMBLY

In a spring form pan, place 1 of the chocolate meringue discs on the bottom.  Pipe a layer mousse on top of the disc.  Add the second disc and repeat with a mousse layer.  Add the last disc and cover with the remaining mousse.  Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour.  After set, remove the cake from the spring form pan and pour the ganache over the top.

Layer 1:

Layer 2:

I did have some left over mousse and chocolate, so I also made some chocolate fudge cupcakes.  These were beautiful.  Garnished with raspberries and fresh mint leaves

The next time I make this recipe I think I will add a thin layer of raspberry sauce (possible a raspberry reduction) on top first mousse layer. 

Smurf-tastic Birthday Cake

So to jump on the smurf bandwagon this summer, my daughter wanted a smurf cake for her sixth birthday.  This would be her second birthday cake this year.  You can see her first cake, the Rapunzel Cake, on this blog.  That cake was a major multi-week effort so I wanted something "easy" for the second go.  When she requested Smurfs, I thought oh..no...here we go again, especially because I have virtually no sculpting experience.  Hmmm....

I decided I would work with modeling chocolate to make the surfs, mostly because I'm out of gum paste :-(  My work recently moved locations and getting nice wonderful high quality gum paste at the ONE store in my area that sells it is no longer a simple trek during lunch.  :-(  :-(.  Needless to say, making a special trip just didn't fit into my "easy" definition.  BUT I had candy melts.  Lots and lots of candy melts.  And luckily...BLUE and RED.  Definite pantry score.

The recipe for the modeling chocolate/candy was straight from Wilton:



Melt bag of candy melts in microwave
Mix in 2/3 Cup of Corn Syrup until paste forms
Cool (Wilton recommends overnight, but if you are willing to work the dough until its pliable and smooth, you only need to let it sit for an hour or two)

I also found that candy melts are easier to work with than modeling chocolate made from chocolate chips.

 

I then molded the little blue men (and the one lady).  You can see them "naked" above. I used wire inside the bodies to support and hold their shape.  Somewhat sad smurfs, I know ,,,,but they do get better, I promise..................

Happy Smurfs!!!   Ok...not absolute look-a-likes, but you can clearly tell what they are.  Brainy was my favorite.

Now, a little about the cake: 

The base cake was an experiment recipe that turned out slightly dryer than most my cakes, but I'm pretty sure I know why and how to fix it. (I used too much brandy which I think evaporated too soon in the baking.  Will need add yogurt or sour cream next time, to hold the moisture, beyond the slight dryness, everything else in the structure of the cake was fabulous)  The filling was whipped cream with pureed strawberries to make "strawberries in cream".

The mushroom house portion was a gluten free cake as one of the party guest was gluten intolerant.  Betty Crocker has a new line of gluten free desserts.  It turned out much better than expected, a slight cornmeal taste and definitely sweeter than a regular cake.  As a gluten cake doesn't rise, I cooked it in a 8x11 pan and then used a circle cutter to cut the shape of the house.  I then stacked the small rounds, layering with the same strawberries in cream filling.   The Betty Crocker's cakes are a good stand in so you can provide something to your guests and no one is left out of the party, especially when its a young child.  I definitely however want to develop my own gluten free recipe so I have something fantastic at hand, if for some reason I need to make a whole cake.  The gluten free cakes remind me of the Victorian nut cakes in many ways...going to have to explore that later...

Frosting was a simple butter cream on all the cake  (1 lbs powdered sugar, 2 sticks butter, 1 ts vanilla, 6 tbsp milk).  The mushroom roof was modeling candy.

In the end... SMURF-ALICIOUS, SMURF-TASTIC SMURF CAKE.  yum

Berry Sweet...only crumbs

Blackberry Cupcakes with Key Lime Buttercream

These went so quick, I don't even have a picture but I do have one awesome recipe.  This is 100% Sweet Mary's own recipe.

Basic cupcakes with blackberry reduction

3 1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup potato flour (can replace with 1/4 c flour)
1 TBSP Baking powder
1/2 TS Salt
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, separated
3/4 cup blackberry reduction sauce (see below)
1/4 cup milk
1 TBSP vanilla

Whip egg whites into a merrange and set aside
Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and set aside
Mix reduction sauce, milk and vanilla in a bowl and set aside
Cream sugar and butter
Add egg yolks, one at a time.  Mix thoroughly before adding the next egg
Alternate adding flour and liquid mixture, starting and ending with flour
Fold in egg whites
Scoop batter into lined cupcake pans
Bake 20-25 minutes at 350

Blackberry Reduction
2 cups blackberries
1/4 cup brandy
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
2 TBSP amaretto

Place all ingredients in a sauce pan and heat over medium heat stirring constantly.  As blackberries begin to breakdown, smash them with a spoon against the side of the pan.  Once berries are broken, remove from heat and strain through a metal strainer. Push as much of the berry through the strainer as possible.  Return sauce to heat and cook on medium stirring constantly until sauce coats the back of a spoon.  If the reduction does not create 3/4 cup of sauce for the recipe, use more milk to achieve one cup of liquid in the recipe.

Keylime Buttercream
This recipe makes for a lot of buttercream so cupcakes can be topped with a large amount of frosting similar to a cupcake bakery

2 lbs powdered sugar
1 1/2 cups butter (3 sticks)
1 TBSP Key lime zest
1 TBSP Key lime juice
5 TBSP Milk

Zest key limes and extract liquid.  Mix all ingredients together at low speed until incorporated then at high speed.  Add more milk if necessary to obtain desired texture.

Assembly:

Spread a small amount of frosting on each cake.  Add sliced fresh blackberries.  Pipe buttercream over the blackberries using an over sized frosting tip.  Top with a fresh blackberry and sprinkle with turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw).  ENJOY