Day 37: Cassis Mousse Miroir, White and Dark Mousse Gateau, Chocolate Cupcakes, Carrot Cake and Pecan Crumb Coffee Cake

Whew! That sure was a mouth full! Okay, so actually, we made the last three today and just finished off the first two (we made those last class minus the tops)! The theme of today's class is liquid fat cakes. I know, it really doesn't sound very appetizing, but that is the reality folks! Yes, this is one of the basic types of cakes. There is also whole-egg foam cakes, meringue cakes and all colors of different combos in between. Gosh, that sounds so "Paula", but you get the gist (I hope!).

So let's begin! Below are the pictures of our "Liquid Fat" cakes: Carrot Cake, Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Glaze and Pecan Crumb Coffee Cake.
















Okay, so here are the mousse cakes that we did! The first is our Fruit Mousse Miroir. Our teacher picked Cassis for the "Fruit". For those of you who don't know what Cassis are, Cassis are Black Currants. Don't feel bad because I didn't know!!! For those of you who did know, smart aleck! =) Oh, and those are little blueberries we dipped in the puree/nappage mix on the top, arranged to look like the currants. I thought that was pretty cool. We also did a White and Dark Mousse Gateau. This one was fun to make. The outside is a Pate a Cornet with the chocolate part made with a stencil (no, I don't pipe quite that perfectly, far from in fact). This was actually very easy to make and you can use colored batter instead of chocolate if you want! From that, we cut a piece to fit into a mold. The bottom of the cake is a kahlua soaked chocolate genoise then we carefully layered the chocolate and white mousses so that when you cut it, it looks like a checker board! It looked pretty cool (wish I took a picture of it cut *sigh*) and it also tasted very good! It was light and mmm, mmm good! I was nervous that the mousses didn't turn out too good because our chocolate had cooled down by the time we were folding them into the rest of the ingredients and it looked lumpy. But, you know what, when I cut into the cake, you couldn't tell!!! And the bonus is that tasted pretty good!!!!!!! Oh, and those scrumptious looking chocolate curls are a hazelnut chocolate! I forgot what it is called (bad student!), but they kind of remind me of Huny chocolates found at your local Filipino Grocer! =) Enjoy the pictures!!!