Birthday cake... chocolate mousse pie.

At Daniela's request I baked a chocolate pie for her birthday: a chocolate mousse pie adapted from Patricia Lousada's Chocolate. I had done the pie a few years ago for the first birthday we spent together and decided to slightly modify it to make it "darker", which worked great, and tried to make chocolate cigars for the decoration, which did not work at all. This pie has a very intense chocolate flavour, enriched by alcoholic notes. It is fluffiest when just out of the oven, soon afterwards the filling tends to "sit" a bit. We waited a bit and let the pie cool slightly. I find it tastes better: the filling becomes more compact, almost truffle like :-9.

First of all the crust: I used the original proportions. This will probably give you quite a bit more pastry than you need but since you can't take a fraction of an egg (you could actually but it's all more complicated) I use the remaining dough to make small round cookies.

The crust dough:
60 g. (2 oz) hazelnuts (which I toasted, skinned and ground)
165 g. (5.8 oz) flour (all-purpose)
30 g. (1 oz) sugar
a pinch of salt
I mixed these together well and then incorporated 125 g. (4.4 oz) cold butter till the butter was absorbed by the flour and the mixture started to form crumbs. At this point I added one beaten egg and kneaded shortly till everything came together. If you need you might add some water (very little) but I find that's not called for. I wrapped the dough and let it rest about 30 minutes in the fridge. Once the time was over (the dough should have become a bit harder) I rolled the crust on a floured surface to the preferred thickness: I like something like 3-4 mm (1/6 in) not more. I lined my pie pan with the dough, cut the excess away and baked it blind at 200C (400F) for about 15 minutes.

For the filling one needs first of all... quite a bit of patience! I started melting 140 g. (5 oz) dark chocolate (used 70%) with 60 g. (2 oz) butter slowly in the microwave. Meanwhile I mixed together 2 eggs and 100 g. (3.5 oz) sugar, put them into a glass bowl and that into a bain-marie. From this point on the instructions in the recipe tell to whip for 10 minutes till the mixture becomes thicker and descends in "ribbons" from your whip. It always takes longer... usually 2-5 minutes more than it takes me to start believing the bloody thing will never thicken! Once it FINALLY became thicker I took it of the heat and mixed in, carefully, the chocolate-butter mix, 2 Tbs flour, 2 Tbs cognac and 5 Tbs whipping (or single) cream . I poured all into the crust and let the pie bake for another 15 minutes at 190C (375F). The filling puffed quite a bit, as expected (after a few minute panic because it did not puff immediately).

Just before serving I decorated the cake. As I mentioned I intended to use chocolate cigars, as in the book's picture. Those are theoretically easy to make. Melt some chocolate, spread it on a board (or other surface) and wait till cold; then, with a sharp knife held at 30-45 degrees move on the chocolate surface. This should give nice chocolate cigars. Should. If your chocolate is cold enough... maybe. Mine, although warm was still quite pliable and so just folded itself into a thick sheet :-(. My last second solution was to dust the cake with cocoa powder and place some "opened up" physalis spaced on the cake border. Not what I wanted but it looked quite cool anyway.

Comments

[Angela]

This looks absolutely gorgeous Alberto! I hope Daniela liked her cake.

With regard to the chocolate cigars/curls - you could have popped the chocolate into the freezer and then tried scraping the chocolate again. The chocolate would probably have remelted quite happily if it was mangled too much. I find that using a cheese plane is actually easier than a knife (unless you wanted really long curls of course).

[Alberto]

Angela, thanks for the cheese plane tip. I have one which I very seldom use... i.e. only once. I'll try it out.
I could't put my chocolate in the freezer since I had poured it on my working surface, 2x0.5 meters... a bit too big for my fridge!
BTW you have a very nice blog. Hadn't seen it before but will be visiting more often!

[claudio]

the cake is very nice!!!!
it be a sorrow don't eat it!!!!!
but i make a question to myself:how you can eat again after the big stuff that you have during christmas period????i am sick too......
for the problem of the chocolate cigars: i made that once time and the suggest is to put the chocolate on marble baking board...(if you have)and temper the chocolat for 10 minutes after that wait that the chocolate became solid and use one pizza's spatule to made it(in this way the cigars are shiny too).
....another thing(maccheronicus inglisc)..the next time that i come to you in jena i would be,gastronomically, treat :-))))

[Alberto]

Hi little brother,

How can I eat all this stuff? slowly :-)))
Nice tip for the cigars: just one question. What do you mean with "pizza spatule"? Maybe you can answer in Italiano.
BTW Nice "maccheronic" English :-P

[claudio]

pizza spatule= it's a spatule like the one that the workman use to putty(i think that putty= stuccare)and the pizza'man use to take the pizza's dough from the wood baking board
i hope to be clearly now.