Serves: An army
I won’t lie. I ‘improvised’ this recipe from this recipe to
suit metric measurements and ingredients available in Ireland. In other words, I glanced over it and did my
own thing to suit the containers I bought my ingredients in. Mainly cream.
There are three ½ litre cartons of cream in this recipe. I also changed the brownie layer recipe
completely because I didn’t trust the science or logic behind her quantities or
method. I also made it into a ‘mock’ red
velvet layer. In truth, you can use
just about whatever cake you want for the base, as long as it is not too
crumbly.
For your sanity, I have compiled all of the
ingredients into one list instead of all the different layers. Think of it as four cakes and a topping. There is one cake layer at the bottom and
three layers of mousse on the top. This
means you will have to start making it the day before or very early in the
morning.
In fact, I made this gluten free cake for a
significant birthday of a very good friend last Friday night. It was therefore delivered in secret to the restaurant
(Seapoint in Monkstown). Chef
kindly let us store the cake in the massive walk-in fridge. I caught him gazing in confusion at my thick
and monstrous looking ganache from the corner of his eye, wondering if
intentional or not. I confessed my error
and after enquiring about my quantities (correctly 1:1 choc:cream) he shared a
tip to which I am grateful: add in a spoon of glucose into the ganache and it
will keep its gloss. Others say butter
will also do the trick. I’ll just have
to make it again.
Equipment
1 length of thick acetate
1 25cm diameter spring form tin
Greaseproof paper
Free standing electric mixer (seriously,
there is too much beating in this recipe and you don't want to be all day doing this).
Ingredients
120g Doves farm
gluten free self-raising flour blend
65g unsweetened cocoa powder
3 sachets of powdered gelatine (I used Dr Oetker’s)
600g white chocolate
600g Dark
chocolate 70% cocoa solids
150g butter
250g sugar
3 eggs
3 pints of cream or 3 x 500mls carton of
cream plus one 150ml carton.
4 x 125g punnets raspberries
1 pod of fresh vanilla
Red food colouring
Salt
Baking powder
Method
For the Mock Red Velvet layer
1.
Preparation: Line the tin with parchment paper by taking
the circular disc out of the tin and drawing a circle on the ‘rough’ side of
the greaseproof paper with a pencil. Cut
out this circle. Cut a long length that
just goes up the side of the tin. Grease
the tin and put the two pieces of greaseproof paper in place. Preheat oven to 170°C. Adjust your oven shelves.
2.
Sieve together the following: 120g self raising flour, 65g unsweetened
cocoa powder, ½ tsp salt and ½ tsp baking powder.
3.
Melt 150g butter over a basin
of hot water or in the microwave. Do not
let it burn, bubble or boil.
4.
Using an electric mixer, beat 3
eggs and 250g sugar together until thick and creamy. When you can make a figure of eight with the
beaters, you are then ready to add the melted butter in at the side of the
bowl. Continue to beat after every
addition.
5.
Using a spatula, add a fifth of
the dry mixture with a tablespoon of red food colouring. Add another fifth and another tablespoon of
red. Carefully add the rest of the
mixture to the sponge and don’t knock out all of the air. Make
it very red.
6.
Pour the mixture into the tin,
cleaning the bowl out with the spatula to avoid waste and to provide for
uninvited guests.
7.
Bake for 30 minutes until you
can smell cake and the mixture is firm to the touch.
8.
Remove the cake using an oven
glove. Leave in tin for three minutes
and then cool on a wire rack. Be careful
not to put a really hot cake on a wire rack or it will stick to the grids.
9.
Clean out the tin while the
cake is cooling down. Line the tin with
the acetate length so it comes up 16 cm from the base. The acetate should be as long as the
circumference of the tin. You may tape a
few pieces together if necessary but they must overlap. Tape in place so it holds. Place the red velvet sponge into the tin and
prepare the first mousse layer.
For the Chocolate Mousse
Step
1. Place 3 tablespoons of cold water into
a small dish and sprinkle on the sachet of powdered gelatine. Gelatine must be added to the water and not
the other way around. Leave the gelatine
and water mixture to one side.
Step
2 Place 200g of dark chocolate in a
microwave proof bowl. Estimate a similar
volume of cream from your 500ml carton and add to the chocolate (about 150mls). Melt this chocolate and cream gently. It’s a good idea to remove the chocolate
before fully melted because it will fully melt in the residual heat.
Step
3 Beat the remaining 350mls of cream
until soft peaks form. Leave to one
side.
Step
4 When
the chocolate mixture has cooled slightly, heat the bowl of gelatine in the
microwave for a few seconds. DO NOT BOIL
or the thickening qualities of the gelatine will be destroyed.
Step
5 Add
the liquid and no longer grainy gelatine mixture to the chocolate mixture and
combine well with a spatula.
Step
6 Fold
in the beaten cream into the chocolate and gelatine mixture. Spoon over the red velvet layer and leave to
set.
For the Raspberry Mousse
1.
Blitz one punnet of the
raspberries with a hand blender.
2.
If desired, strain through a
sieve so you are left with a puree.
Personally the seeds do not bother me. A lot of the raspberries will get
stuck to the sieve and this is wasteful.
I think they add texture and flavour.
Do as you wish here.
3.
Follow steps 1-5 for the
chocolate mousse above but using 200g of white chocolate instead.
4.
Fold in the raspberry puree and
another punnet of whole raspberries to the white chocolate mixture and then
fold in the cream as for step 6 above. Add
a few drops of food colouring if you want for extra pink.
5.
Spoon the white chocolate and
raspberry mousse over the dark chocolate layer and leave to set.
For the White Chocolate Mousse
1.
Follow steps 1-6 for the
chocolate mousse but use 200g white chocolate instead of dark.
2.
Cut a length of a vanilla pod
and scrape out the seeds. Add the seeds to the chocolate mixture after step
5. Reserve the empty pod to infuse
another recipe at another time if you desire.
3.
Fold in the cream and place on
previous raspberry mousse layer. Leave
to set.
For the ganache and to finish.
1.
Break 200g dark chocolate into
little pieces.
2.
Heat 200mls cream until very
hot but not boiling.
3.
Add the hot cream to the
chocolate. Stir until melted.
4.
When cooled but still viscous
and liquid, pour over the cake.
5.
Decorate with fresh raspberries, chocolate shavings and perhaps a few sprigs of mint.
So, that’s it. It will cut into 40 thin slices and half of
everybody will leave it behind because it is still a lot of cake.
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