Chocolate Mousse Cake

Two very dear college friends of mine have birthdays one week apart. We three like to celebrate somewhere in between their birthdays. One of those friends is stuck in the hospital awaiting the birth of her baby, so this year we brought the party to her. I offered to make dessert and mocktails for the group and I chose a chocolate mousse cake for dessert.

Of course I substituted duck for chicken eggs. Six as opposed to eight because of the difference in size. 

I didn't feel like going out to buy bittersweet chocolate and milk chocolate when I have two varieties of really good chocolate at home - 70% dark chocolate chips and semi-sweet chocolate chips. I did check with chat GPT if it thought I could make those substitutions and still have the cake turn out, and chat GPT thought it would be good. 😅

Got to put my double boiler to use ...

Whisked the egg yolks and the sugar. I'm not sure if I did that long enough because a lot of the sugar fell to the bottom and was not completely mixed in.

Fold the chocolate into the egg yolks, then add the whipped egg whites. Fun fact, duck eggs take longer to whip than chicken eggs. 

Everything gently folded together. According to the recipe you could chill this and eat it plain like regular mousse. 🤔

It was very thick and had to be spread in the springform pan instead of poured. It gets cooked in a bain-marie in the oven (basically the pan in a pan of water). I used parchment paper lining the inside to prevent sticking and aluminum foil wrapped around the outside to prevent water leaking in. 

The only thing big enough to hold the springform pan was my roasting pan. A gigantic bain-marie!

Because I was using duck eggs and my pan was slightly bigger than the recipe called for, my cake would be finished baking earlier than the recipe said. You want the cake to have a slight jiggle in the middle so that it gels in the fridge (like lemon bars). The original recipe says to bake for 50 minutes. This one was supposed to be finished around 40 minutes. I checked at 34 minutes, and it looked quite done! I think I actually over baked it somehow. 

 

It had to cool completely before I took it out of the pan, and I kept it in the fridge overnight. Even though it was overcooked, it's still tasted delicious and I would definitely make this recipe again. I kind of want to make another one this week. 😂

Here is the place setting I brought to the hospital for our birthday celebration:

I pulled out a yellow tablecloth and napkins I embroidered with a rose design back in high school (past 4H project), my rose patterned dessert plates and rose handled silverware, pink elephant wine glasses, and a few crystal and glass serving dishes. Very elegant! It was nice to be fancy for an afternoon! 

And I completely forgot to take a picture of the cake once it was completely finished, so you'll have to look really closely at the above picture to see the cake at the far end of the table. 😅