The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard.
When I was in school, we made a Concorde cake: layers of chocolate meringue and chocolate mousse, encased by and topped with chocolate meringue “logs.” My classmates and I agreed it was delicious, but we were hard-pressed to understand how the 8-inch cake could be gracefully cut into individual servings. The idea of single-serving-sized desserts came up.
This month’s Daring Bakers challenge — individual chocolate Pavlovas (meringue shells) topped with chocolate mascarpone mousse and drizzled with mascarpone cream — seemed like a good candiate for a Concorde-style interpretation.
All of the challenge components — meringue, mousse, cream — are here, with just a couple of tweaks to the original recipes. In the mousse, I replaced the Grand Marnier with 4 tablespoons of Chambord. And to give the mascarpone cream more body, so it could be used as a top layer rather than a drizzling sauce, I cut back the crème anglaise in the recipe to one cup, and whipped the finished cream to soft peaks.
To start, I piped the meringue into 3.5-inch discs (two per individual dessert) and lots of long “sticks” (about eight 12-inch sticks per dessert; your mileage may vary).
To make “mousse rings,” I stacked and taped together two 3.5-inch English muffin rings. Lining with plastic wrap makes unmolding easy. I trimmed the meringue discs down a little to leave a slight gap between the disc and the ring, to fill in with mousse.
I layered meringue-mousse-meringue-mousse in each ring, and chilled them for an hour or so to firm up the mousse. I cut the sticks into different-length pieces and pressed them into the side …
… then topped the whole thing with a layer of mascarpone cream.
The garnish is a few raspberries and crushed meringue pieces.
If you need to hold these in the refrigerator, I suggest holding off on the cream layer until just before serving. I didn’t do this, and the meringue absorbed the moisture in the cream and turned soft quickly. Since the integrity of those meringue sticks is critical for containing the cream, well, … I’ll leave it to your imagination what could happen (and did, although I, uh, forgot to take a photo). Even so, I’m placing this one in the success column because the taste was wonderful and I do think it will be fine next time if I actually do as I say, and not as I did.
As always the other Daring Bakers have created some amazing meetings of meringue and mousse. Check them out!
this looks so incredible! I love this cake!
have a nice day!
Paula
Now I am in complete awe! I thought you were cake-challenged, and you pull this masterpiece!
amazing, very professional-looking!
Wow, that looks incredible. I love the organic look of the “sticks” on the outside.
Your meringue cake looks splendid! You are very creative. Love your version!
Cheers,
Rosa
Oh wow, you really created a masterpiece. But I’m not sure I could eat a whole mini cake by myself. I’d sure like to try though.
Oh goodness, this creation is just amazing. What an ingenious way to make a cake.
Ooooo, crispy, creamy delightfullness!
They’re adorable! I love the way you made the sticks out of the meringue, it makes the whole thing look really neat.
I can imagine how difficult it is to try to cut it into serving size. I think your idea of making this into individual serving is brilliant Susan.
Wow. I’m super impressed! What a gorgeous dessert.
Awesome Meringue Meets Mousse….. the sticks in single serve are such a cool idea… 🙂
cheers,
The Variable, Crazy Over Desserts – Nachiketa
Catch me on facebook @ Crazy Over Desserts
I’m super impressed that is so so clever and such an elegant interpretation of the challenge recipe it looks wonderful well done. Kudos to you. Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.
I remember making concorde in school, too, but I never thought to turn it into an individual dessert. This was really an inspired idea, beautifully executed. Really perfect looking.
Love the idea of making sticks instead of the regular shapes. It looks very inviting.
Very inventive!!
This is the most creative production I’ve seen of this month challenge! Love it!
Never heard of a Concorde Cake till now, but next time I make this, I making one! Its so pretty.
Looks like you finally got a challenge that didn’t give you grief. 🙂
That Concorde Cake looks gorgeous. You’ve introduced it to me (now I’m going to have to do some research and make one!) to this type of cake, the chocolate meringue logs are gorgeous. Such an inventive and novel take on the challenge! Well done!