Heavenly Chocolate Mousse Cake

All's well

that ends well.

The sponge cake, 

which I was dreading,

turned out fine.

Filled with confidence

I started melting chocolate 

with cream for the mousse.

Simple enough

except

an hour later 

it still wasn't 

up to 77C degrees.

I gave up at 74C

and popped it in the frig

to chill.

But wait...

why was there a bowl of egg yolks

sitting on the counter?

Retrieving the chocolate soup

I whisked in the yolks,

all twelve of them,

and tried to bring it up to 77C degrees.

All seemed to be going right,

the chocolate was thickening nicely

and then

the most peculiar thing happened;

oil started seeping out of a 

chocolate-y congealed mass.

 I "calmly" asked myself

what would the Alpha Bakers do?

Whisk it back to life!

Miraculously

the KitchenAid

did just that.

Tackling the

sponge was another thing.

My too large loaf pan

completely out witted

 the template geometry.

The ends 

pieced together

like brick walls.

Spackling the 

rather thick mousse 

neatly

inside the cake lined

loaf pan

was a bit tricky.

Wrapped in plastic

and back to the frig

since by

now it was late into the night.

It flipped out okay

but looks can be deceiving. 

Mousse is a bit dense

straight out of the frig

It isn't symmetrical like

Orin's.

Still it made for a mighty

tasty breakfast.

The chocolate mousse

is definitely worth

the stirring.

The hardest part

is waiting for it

to come back

to room temperature

(or 6-8 seconds per slice in the microwave for the impatient moi)

but once it does

the airy chocolate

is amazing

with the tender sponge cake.

~

The Baking Bible

by

Rose Levy Beranbaum