Baking Class Eighteen: Mousses

Time to assemble the tiramisu and yule log from the previous class. To do the tiramisu, we’re going to need some mascarpone filling. We made half of the recipe below and because we didn’t have enough rings to go around, we assembled it take away angel food cake containers.

Mascarpone Filling Formula

Egg yolks	2 yolks
Sugar	6 oz
Water	4 oz
Corn syrup	2 oz
Mascarpone	1 lb
Heavy cream	1 lb 8 oz

Whip the egg yolks until light. Make a syrup of the sugar, water, and corn syrup by heating it until 248°. Gradually pour the syrup into the egg yolks while whipping constantly. Continue whipping until cool.

In a mixer with the paddle attachment, mix the mascarpone until soft. Then, with the mixer running at slow speed, add the egg yolk mixture a little bit at a time. Wait until each addition is blended before adding more. Whip the cream until soft peaks form and fold into the mascarpone mixture.

This is the consistency of my mascarpone filling.

Assemble the Tiramisu

Take the first round and insert into tin flat side up. You might have to trim the round in order to get it to fit.

Use a brush to soak the cake with strong coffee. I also added Grand Marnier and a bit of sugar to my coffee. Put the lady fingers around the outside cake in one long circle so they are standing on edge. Soak them with the coffee mixture as well.

Kind of nasty looking, but it's getting there.

Dollop half of the mascarpone filling in, place the second round on top, and then soak with the coffee mixture again. Fill the top with the rest of the mascarpone filling. Now, we were short on mascarpone filling. So, I made some whipped cream and added the rest of the coffee mixture to it. And, then used to that to make sure the filling came to the top of the lady fingers.

Results

The dark lines on the top are chocolate cigarettes that I placed in the whipped cream. I know, it looks weird in the angel food cake tin, but it tasted lovely.

All filled in and lovely

For the yule log, you need a filling. We used chocolate mousse.

Chocolate Mousse Formula

Egg yolks	1.5 oz
Fine granulated sugar	1.33 oz
Water	1 oz
Dark chocolate, melted	6 oz
Heavy cream	11 oz

Whip the egg yolks until pale. Make a syrup with the sugar and water and bring to a boil at 244°. Whip the hot syrup into the yolks and continue whipping until cool.

Melt the chocolate and fold into the egg mixture. Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks. Whip one-third of the cream into the chocolate mixture, and then fold the remaining cream until it’s well incorporated.

Now that you have mousse. Take your sheet cake and lay it on parchment paper. Wet the cake with a simple syrup. Spread the mousse in an even layer over the cake, making sure to bring the mousse to the edges of the long ends (but not quite to the edge of the short ends).

Roll the cake up. If your cake is too thin or too thick, it will probably crack (as mine and a number of my classmates’ cakes did). Use the parchment paper to help keep a tight roll. Once rolled, wrap in plastic and refrigerate.

After allowing the roll to set up a bit, bring it out and frost it. I used buttercream with cocoa powder added to it to form a nice log. As you can see from the picture, my buttercream was a bit chunky and didn’t take the cocoa powder consistently.

Why does everything I make in bakery class end up looking like a turd on a plate?

Oh well, we can cover our mistakes with powdered sugar!

A sweet, sweet turd on a plate.

And then, I made these wonderful berries with leaves (on the back of a spatula) and snowflakes (my index finger for reference). Hasn’t my artistry come a long way? OK, these aren’t mine. Chef did them as example. ¡Que c’est joli!

So very teeny tiny, but so very detailed.

Nice, right?

So, that about sums up my baking class. I could do a tidy little recap here, but I’ll let the posts speak for themselves. (Psst: I learned a lot and have a new found appreciation for all things confectionary.)

 

Formulas from the fifth edition of “Professional Baking” by Wayne Gisslen.