All posts tagged birthday cake

Mango Chocolate Mousse Charlotte

I’ve always wanted to do a Charlotte cake after seeing such pretty pictures at FoodGawker and Tastespotting and I finally had the opportunity to do so for my sister A’s 12th birthday.

Since she wanted a chocolate mousse filling, I wanted something fruity to accompany it and since we all love mangoes (Philippine Mangoes FTW!), it was a no-brainer. For the ladyfingers, I used the recipe from Desserts by Pierre Herme and Dorie Greenspan which is really, really good, light and fluffy and I suggest you to try it if you haven’t! You can use it as a sponge cake layer instead of piping it in the traditional ladyfinger shape which I did for the cake layers.

Unfortunately, when we sliced the cake, the mousse wasn’t chilled enough as I had hoped (since I made it on the afternoon the same day) so I took this cross-section shot the next day, just to give you guys a visual of how the cake looks inside. As you notice, we love mangoes so much that there aren’t any left on top anymore.


The mousse was really good, tasty, not too sweet and I’ll definitely be making it again in the future. Overall, the cake was great! Slightly bitter from the chocolate mousse and sweetened by the mangoes.

So to my young minion sister, enjoy your last year as a kid for you’ll officially be a teen next year! I’ll be leaving soon and won’t see you til next year and God knows you’ll be taller than me by then (NOO!!!). I love you to bits and remember to keep your feet on the ground and think before you do. OK?

For the chocolate mousse recipe, click here.

So basically, the layers went on like this (from top):

Mango, chocolate mousse, ladyfingers, chocolate mousse (just enough to cover the mangoes), mango, chocolate mousse, ladyfinger.

Ladyfingers

from Desserts by Pierre Herme by Dorie Greenspan and Pierre Herme

Makes enough for 2 9″ discs or one 9″ disc and about 30 or so ladyfingers
Ingredients:

6 egg whites

2/3 cup granulated sugar + 2 tbsp.

5 egg yolks

1 cup minus 1 tbsp. all purpose flour

powdered sugar for dusting

Instructions (shortened by me):

  1. Preheat oven to 450F. Line your baking sheets with parchment paper or silpat.
  2. Whip egg whites while gradually sprinkling the 2/3 cup of sugar until stiff.
  3. Meanwhile, whisk together the remaining 2 tbsp. of sugar and egg yolks until well mixed.
  4. Fold 1/2 of the egg yolk mixture into the egg whites. Fold the rest in.
  5. Sift the flour over the egg white mixture and fold until flour is well incorporated.
  6. Using a 1/2″ round tip, pipe into ladyfinger shapes or 9″ discs if you wish. About 1/2 – 3/4″ high and 1″ width for ladyfingers.
  7. Dust ladyfingers with powdered sugar and let stand for 15 minutes. Dust one more time until sugar is absorbed. (No need to dust the discs.)
  8. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until lightly golden.
6 Comments
by Kat on August 10, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in cakes/cupcakes, dessert
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Posted by Kat on August 10, 2010

https://bakingbetweencities.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/mango-chocolate-mousse-charlotte/

happy birthday to my grandma!

Two years ago, after I graduated high school and picked up baking, I’ve been baking each of my family members their birthday cakes. Each birthday allows me to experiment with different kinds of cakes, textures and layers. But whenever my grandma’s birthday comes along, I always bake her favorite kind of cake, a yellow butter cake. but this year when I asked her what she wanted, her first answer was, to my surprise, chocolate!

Normally, I’d jump at any opportunity to bake anything chocolate [who doesn’t? ;)] but since my family is very conscious with sweets and do try to lay off them, I’ve decided to combine both butter and chocolate cakes. I know it sounds weird but I decided to have 2 layers of butter cake and a layer of chocolate in between them and frost with something light.

The cake turned out to be pretttttty good (I’m still eating it and it’s already midnight!)! Although, I would use another recipe for the chocolate layer instead of adding cocoa powder using the same yellow cake recipe. But the yellow cake was great! The frosting however, wouldn’t hold up as I would’ve liked maybe because it’s pretty hot in this part of the world but it was still quite okay.

Now I gotta admit two years on and I’m still a noob an amateur when it comes to cake decorating, being not exactly the most creative person on Earth which is ironic since I’d really like to open my own patisserie/cafe business in the future but hey, I like to think that my perseverance will pay off in the long run. ;)

Do you like the basket weave pattern? :3 I’m very happy even though it’s not perfect because this is my first try doing the pattern! The frosting started to melt towards the end though, but I’m still happy! Excuse the giddy person.

Buuuuut enough about me.

I’d like to dedicate this post to my Grandmother; a beautiful, caring, hardworking, loving and smart woman who’s achieved a lot and worked hard for her family. I hope you liked your cake this year or at least pretend to! Haha! Love you Ama*!

As for the recipes, I used Deb’s (of Smitten Kitchen) recipe for the yellow cake and for the frosting, I found this recipe for a Cream Cheese Whipped Cream Frosting from allrecipes.com, which is really light. You can find the recipe for the chocolate whipped cream filling here, wherein I used just half a teaspoon of the espresso powder and used melted chocolate instead of cocoa powder.

*Ama means grandmother in Hokkien, a Chinese dialect. :)

6 Comments
by Kat on July 16, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in cakes/cupcakes, dessert
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Posted by Kat on July 16, 2010

https://bakingbetweencities.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/happy-birthday-to-my-grandma/