There were two recent birthdays which I missed and determined to additionally celebrate with a chocolate party cake filled with two mousses and covered in lots of fudgy icing. I’d wanted to try the same recipe as the last chocolate party cake, the tall one which I felt would’ve been better if I’d got cake flour* and also experiment with a white chocolate mousse because I’d not made one before. Chocolate mousse of various flavors has filled lots of cakes, and my all-time favorite commercial cake, Tuxedo Cake by The Cakerie,** has a delicious white chocolate mousse filling. Time for me to have a go, make a fancy cake and an Indian dinner by 6 PM when my University of Washington Huskies have a go at the conference championship.
But oops! New oven has a bad door and a sudden overheating problem and I didn’t catch on soon enough, so the beautiful, high and chocolate three layers I was counting on to turn into six, failed. Burned chocolate. Even cutting off half an inch wouldn’t help the dry mess, and out it went into the compost heap, tested along the way by three men who said it could be saved, surely. Not today. Burned chocolate, as I said.
Nothing to do but quick make a substitute, and the quickest chocolate cake that can safely be split in layers is the Crazy Cake. I also made my recipe for dark chocolate mousse and then used that recipe for the white chocolate mousse, not knowing if it would work or not with an exact exchange. It works, but is softer, very buttery and delicious, I think, although I prefer dark chocolate. To each her own, or his.
The closeup photo at the bottom shows what happened to the mousses since I had only four layers to work with instead of six. Concentric mousses, if two can be concentric. It has to be frosted quickly as the icing sets up by the time it’s been pushed around and over once. There’s no time to dilly-dally. I sprinkled some of the Choccywoccydoodah callets brought from London by my daughter recently. Voila!
And, the closeup, which better explains how the dark chocolate mousse was scooped and flattened in a disk in the middle of three layers, then surrounded by white chocolate mousse and finally frosted and decorated with commercial truffles and some choccywoccydoodah chocolate callets.
*https://mschefinseattle.com/2016/10/22/chocolate-party-cake-no-party/
**https://mschefinseattle.com/2016/09/25/tuxedo-cake-from-the-cakerie-for-my-birthday/
Update: Woohoo! Huskies won! Here’s why. The Indian dinner was a stew made of eggplant, red bell peppers, onion, leftover turkey shredded after being boiled with veggies as if for soup, the broth therefrom and the spices which go into a typical Indian korma. I served it over Basmati rice. It was a new way to use up leftover Apple Cup turkey. We liked it. Lucky Turkey Veggie Korma. Nevermind the failed cake.
Ms Chef in Seattle 