Chocolate and Raspberry Mousse Cake

It is the month of luuuurve and you will fall in love with this Chocolate and Raspberry Mousse Cake! This cake is so decadent which makes it perfect for sharing ;). If you are like me however and have a partner that doesn't 'believe' in Valentines day, you can make this cake and eat it all yourself!

I made two versions of this cake, one that is just mousse and raspberries inside a type of thin sponge cake and the other is layers of sponge, ganache, cream and mousse. Both are devine and use the same ingredients, it's up to you really to do whatever layers you want, get creative!

This recipe comes from my advanced bread and pastry text book that I received during my apprenticeship. It has been a great reference for me for reliable recipes and has introduced me to many new desserts and sweets. I have tagged many recipes to try and hopefully I will get around to all of them one day.

Chocolate and Raspberry Mousse Cake

Adapted from Advanced Bread and Pastry by Michel Suas

What you will need

For the Biscuit Viennois
110g almond meal
110g icing sugar
50g egg yolks (approx 3 egg yolks)
90g eggs (approx 2 eggs)
200g egg whites (approx 6 egg whites)
20g sugar
45g cake flour
45g plain flour

For the Chocolate Mousse
300ml light cream
300g dark choc
90g egg yolks (approx 5)
90g sugar
30ml water
300ml heavy cream

Frozen raspberries
Cocoa for dusting

What you will need to do

To make the biscuit viennois, preheat oven to 200*C and prepare two baking trays with baking paper. Sift together the almond meal and icing sugar. Add the egg yolks and whole eggs, whip on high speed until tripled in volume. In a separate bowl beat the egg whites and add sugar to make a medium stiff meringue. Fold the meringue into the whole egg mixture and fold in the sifted flours. Divide the mixture between the two trays and spread out evenly. Bake for about 7 minutes. Once baked, flip the sponges onto new pieces of baking paper and remove the old baking paper.

To make the chocolate mousse, make a ganache with the light cream and chocolate by bringing the cream to the boil then pouring over chocolate. Stir the ganache until smooth then set aside. Dissolve the sugar in the water and cook in a saucepan to 121*C. While it is cooking, begin whipping the egg yolks. Slowly add the sugar syrup to the yolks and whip on a medium-high speed until cool to the touch. Whip the heavy cream to soft peaks. Add the egg yolk mixture to the ganache (which should be a similar temperature) then fold in the cream gently.

To assemble, cut out four strips of biscuit viennois to line four small loose bottomed cake tins (cheesecake tins). Cut out four circles the size of the bottom of the cake tins. Line the tins with the sponge and place a circle in the bottom of each. Half fill each tin with chocolate mousse. Place a layer of raspberries on top of the mousse then cover with another layer of mousse. Make sure the mousse is divided equally amongst the tins, if you have any excess biscuit viennois protruding the top just trim it off so that it is flush with the top of the mousse. Refrigerate over night.

When ready to serve, remove from tin and sprinkle with cocoa. You can add some raspberries for decoration too.