I made lots of Dorie desserts for Hanukah: speculoos, apple cake (this time with flour instead of potato starch), this mousse cake, and croquants.
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I had high hopes for Michel Rostang’s Double Chocolate Mousse cake–the recipe is quite similar to I recipe I love: Maida Heatter’s Chocolate Mousse Torte. (In her cookbooks, but also in the NYT in 1972 and again in the January 1973 recipe roundup as the Desert of the Year). Maida Heatter’s recipe is ideal for Passover because it is (a) luscious, and (b) flourless.
Here is the idea for both recipes: you make a chocolate mousse, then you bake part of it to make a base. The baked mousse rises up and then falls to make a shell for the uncooked mousse. The catch is that serving recipes with uncooked eggs is a bit risky. What is interesting about the Rostang recipe is that you can bake the whole thing and serve it warm or cold.
Another interesting thing is that the Rostang recipe only calls for a quarter of a pound of chocolate–half the amount in the Maida Heatter recipe and much less than in most flourless chocolate desserts.
The Maida Heatter recipe is baked in a pie plate, but this recipe is baked in an 8″ cake ring or springform pan without the base. I have a cake ring, so I used that. I followed the Dorie’s version three of the Rostang recipe, which involves baking a portion of the mousse, then chilling it, then filling the base with the rest of the mousse and baking again.
As for the result? Everyone loved this cake. Huge hit.
I couldn’t tell the difference in texture between the two layers of baked mousse, and I thought the taste was nice, but not as good as I remember the Maida Heatter mousse torte tasting. I think I would like to try to make the Maida Heatter mousse torte using the double baking technique in Dorie’s version of the Rostang recipe.
Another idea that is similar: Alice Medrich’s baked Warm Bittersweet Mousse.
Tags: alice medrich, Dorie Greenspan, Double Chocolate Mousse Cake, French Fridays with Dorie, maida heatter, Michel Rostang, Mousse, Passover Desserts
Pragmatic Attic 
January 21, 2011 at 6:53 pm |
Your cake looks like it poofed up nicely…love the tell tale cracks! I was wondering whether the amount of chocolate was a typo, but my chocoholic family had no complaints! I’d love to try some of the other recipes you mentioned…thanks for the leads!
January 22, 2011 at 6:13 pm |
Thanks, Liz!
January 22, 2011 at 10:46 pm |
I thought the double baking lent an interesting aspect to the cake – it wasn’t a major difference, but the bottom was just a little more dense than the top layer. I think I would like to experiment some more with this one!
January 25, 2011 at 10:09 am |
Thanks, Cher! Interesting . . . . I guess the difference was subtle and I just didn’t pick it up.
January 24, 2011 at 5:33 pm |
Your cake looks great with the powdered sugar on top. I found the cake very chocolate-y, perhaps because the espresso magnified the taste. I’ll have to check out Maida Heatter’s recipe, though. Can’t have too much comparison, when it comes to chocolate, can you?
January 25, 2011 at 10:11 am |
Thanks, Teresa! You are so right, too. The Maida Heatter recipe is a tnt classic. My only issue with it is the raw eggs thing, but Alice Medrich has a way of preparing mousse so that the mixture is heated properly.