Chocolate Lemon Entremet

I apologize for the lack of posts >.< 

I've been completely flooded with orders. I've panicked, I've made endless batches of mousses, travelled across the city to buy supplies, and I've been piping countless chocolate decorations. I've quite nearly been working 17 hours a day trying to finish last minute orders and often find myself still working at 4-5 in the morning. Probably one of the biggest problems I have is that my kitchen utensils were not made for commercial use. Instead of being able to make larger batches, I'm pretty limited to smaller ones, which makes it harder for business purposes. I did recently buy another half hemisphere mold though, which does speed things up a bit (phew). 

The process of making and molding the mousses aren't exactly the hardest part for me. What I think is the hardest task for mousses like these are the decorations. Especially the faces. OMG the faces. I would make most of the faces out of chocolate, but always find them melting as soon as I touched them. 

Anyways, one of the most loved flavors in the world would have to be chocolate. Not being much of a chocolate fan (yes, I don't especially favor chocolate), I found plain chocolate mousse to be a bit um, blah (for the lack of better words -.-"). One of the reasons I could ever eat chocolatey things was probably due to the addition of fruits, the most common ones being oranges, cherries, and strawberries. Citrusy and tart fruits seem to always bring out the flavors and balance the sweetness of chocolate. I did think of using passion fruits (yes, I'm addicted), but found it a bit repetitive so I decided against it. I thought of oranges but found the combination so common. Then I eventually settled for lemon. I always had a love hate relationship with them (mostly love). I loved the way they tasted in literally EVERYTHING. But I hated how my stomach always had such a negative reaction to the sourness of it :( One other thing I didn't like was probably the fact that in desserts, lemons are almost quite nearly always cooked into a curd. Maybe I'm just really bad with cooking curd, but I can ALWAYS smell and taste the eggy-ness. I can't stand the eggy taste. It literally makes me gag. So dilemma: I want to use lemons, but I don't want that eggy taste. 

As usual, I surfed the net (Did I say that Google is my best friend?), hoping to find something that's actually lemony and not eggy. I eventually found this Pierre Herme recipe that everyone felt was absolutely divine. I decided to give it a go (who can ignore the fact that it's a Pierre Herme recipe? hehe). And let me just say, I LOVE IT. The creaminess, the tart taste, the real actual taste of butter, instead of eggy-ness. Dilemma Solved.

With the lemon cream out of the way, I searched around for a chocolate mousse recipe and eventually settled for one that I saw on the cakechef website I used for the Chocolate Joconde in my previous post.  The chocolate was creamy, fragrant, and not too sweet, exactly what I was looking for. Since the three shapes I was required to make consisted of a bear, I made this flavor combination into the shape of a bear (since the mousse was brown). Again, I need to find the time to actually take a picture of the innards T-T. Hopefully sometime soon hehe. In the meantime, enjoy these cute bear cakes!


Chocolate Lemon Entremet


~Chocolate Joconde~
Source: Cake Chef


~Lemon Cream~
Adapted from Desserts by Pierre Hermé.

zest of 2 lemons
120g sugar
2      eggs
83ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
150g butter, chopped

1. Zest the lemons in a large heatproof bowl.
2. Add in sugar and rub the lemon zest into the sugar until the mixture is damp and grainy
3. Add the eggs and whisk together
4. Add in lemon juice and whisk to combine
5. Place the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water and cook, while continuously stirring with a whisk, to 
    82-83 degrees C
6. Strain mixture into a bowl and let cool to 60 degrees C
7. Add in butter pieces, bit by bit and blend using an immersion blender until smooth
8. Spoon mixture onto a cling film and flatten out and freeze until firm

~Chocolate Mousse~

55g cream (A) 

55g milk 

30g egg yolk 

9g sugar 

97g semi-sweet chocolate 

32g milk chocolate 

227g cream (B), whipped

1. Boil cream (A) and milk together

2. In another bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar together

3. Pour heated cream mixture over yolks to temper, then return to stove and heat until 84 degrees C

4. Melt both types of chocolates together

5. Strain yolk mixture into the melted chocolate. Mix well

6. Fold whipped cream (B) into mixture

~Assembly~

1.   Prepare 3 cm half hemisphere molds
2.   Pour mousse into half of the mold
3.   Cut out 2 cm circles from the frozen lemon cream, and place ontop of mousse
4.   Cover lemon cream with more mousse, until the mold is fully filled
5.   Place molds into freezer and leave till firm
6.   Cut out 3 cm rounds of the chocolate joconde base
7.   Remove mousse from their molds carefully and place onto the joconde base
8.   Decorate to recreate bear faces.

One last flavor coming soon!  <3

Love,

Natalie