Our final project for this class is designing and executing an entremets, which is a fancy mousse-based cake. They have a lot of contrasting flavors and textures on the inside and are usually decorated super intricately. They are really popular in France; not so much in the US. We have two trial runs before we actually have to make the cake… and by trial runs, I'm talking seven-hour lab sessions.
My first try was not spectacular, but I got some really good notes and ideas to go on for next time. My entremets flavors are chocolate, coffee, and hazelnut. I started with a brownie base, filled the cake with a white chocolate coffee mousse (sort of like a latte), and then put a praline (aka hazelnut) crispy chocolate disc in the middle of the cake. The whole thing was covered in a shiny chocolate glaze and then coated with chopped hazelnuts.
I had this great idea for an awesome decoration but it totally flopped. My cake was super simple looking in the end, but our focus today was on the inside of the cake and the flavor combination, so I'm not too stressed about it. I have a three hour research lab today where I'll get to brainstorm new ways to decorate the outside of the cake.
Valrhona is one of the school's partners/sponsors, so we are definitely rocking some high class chocolate in the labs. Yum.
Here's a picture of my entremets before I glazed and decorated it. You assemble it in a metal ring, freeze it, and then slide the ring off. Easy as pie! Or maybe I should say, Easy as entremets!
My finished product. Please ignore the naked top of my cake.
Here's a picture of the cross section. You can see the brownie on the bottom and the crispy deliciousness in the middle layer. My brownie was way too thick and turned as hard as a brick once I froze the cake, so I'm working on a different formula for the next trial run.
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