Ooh… overdose! A coffee-chocolate pavlova, dark chocolate mascarpone mousse, and creme anglaise sauce with Sambuca, made for the Daring Bakers’ June challenge.

My first challenge, and it’s this double-chocolate whammy. I never had any trouble with merengue or pavlova before, but my first two attempts at making a chocolate pavlova failed, as the fat in the cocoa powder made the egg white lose its stiffness while it was baking – and I ended up with a kind of melted, flattened-out disc instead of a nice crisply defined bottom for the mousse. I corrected that by using about a quarter of the cocoa amount, and a quantity of corn starch (which helps to stabilize the egg white).

And what is worse, I never liked chocolate mousse at all – especially the orange flavored variant; argh, the horror. Probably a youth trauma from the 70ties; I think I remember horrible, orange flavored chemical chocolate mousse from a *tin*, that you’d have to shake before serving… can’t remember the brand of that… But I thought that with a good quality recipe I might overcome that aversion, as I’ve nothing against chocolate with citrus – on the contrary! I’m happy to report that the chocolate mascarpone mousse made with this recipe is absolute heaven, not too sweet or heavy, but a creamy delight; and easy too; something I definitely will make again.

So I made two small changes to the recipe: I added instant coffee powder to the pavlova, and I used chocolate liqueur instead of the orange-flavored Grand Marnier.

It’s my first time to join in something like this, and I think it’s amazing to see the diversity of what’s produced. I don’t think that’s a good thing: “Chocolate mousse? Nah, I’ll do a blueberry mousse instead…” I think it’s my designer background that makes me feel that one should stick to the briefing as much as possible. Which sometimes is hard or goes against your own idea of how things should be – and that’s the moment when you learn and get better. But many participants seem to feel it’s not about trying to meet a challenge, it’s about showing off, “watch me be creative & original”; this will not teach you anything new, is my opinion. Oh, well. Something else I took away from this challenge: even in baking, I’m a designer first, rather than an artist; woo-hoo :-)

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard.

First: the pavlova

Put the egg whites in a bowl and whip until soft peaks form. Increase speed to high and gradually add granulated sugar about 1 tbsp at a time until stiff peaks form.
Combine the powdered sugar, corn starch, coffee and cocoa powder, and sift them over the egg whites. Fold the dry ingredients into the white using a metal spoon or a spatula (this looks like it will not happen; fold gently and it will eventually come together).
Scoop the mixture onto a piece of baking paper on a baking tray, and shape it using a spatula. Give it a bit of a hollow center. Put this in a pre-heated oven of 140C and allow the temperature to drop steadily to 95C. Bake it for a minimum of one hour, 1,5 hour max.

The pavlova is supposed to be crisp on the outside, but have a light, soft, marshmallowy interior. (A pavlova is not a merengue, which is crisp inside and out. That would make it troublesome to eat with the spoon you’d need for the mousse and cream.)

In the picture above, I used a mixture of crushed sesame seed and sea salt to scatter over the edge of the pavlova, to give it a crustier look and its flavours a bit more contrast.

The best ever chocolate mousse

Put 40 ml of the heavy cream and the lemon zest in a saucepan over medium high heat. Once warm, add the chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and let sit at room temperature until cool.
Place the mascarpone, the remaining 80 ml cream and nutmeg in a bowl. Whip on low for a minute until the mascarpone is loose. Add the liqueur and whip on medium speed until the mixture is well blended and holds soft peaks.
Bit by bit, add the cooled chocolate mixture, and mix until well incorporated. Fill a pastry bag with the mousse. Let this firm up some more in the fridge for about half an hour. Don’t leave overnight – it will then become too solid to work with. Top the pavlova with the chocolate mousse. In my first attempt I used a cookie press nozzle with may holes, in an attempt to create a heap of spaghetti. The one in the picture above is also made with a cookie press nozzle – an extra large star shape. If you’re not immediately serving, place it in the fridge.

Mascarpone cream sauce

Put all ingredients into a bowl. On slow speed, whisk in the mascarpone to incorporate. Then beat on higher speed until the mixture is slightly fluffy. Use this to serve as an accompanying sauce, or to drizzle over the chocolate mousse.

Try-outs and leftovers

Whether the pavlova will keep its shape in the oven depends on the amount of cocoa, which is a fat, that is added to the mixture. And each part of this recipe is delicious on its own. If you happen to have leftover amounts of merengue, mousse and/or cream, you could serve them in glasses, like this:

This was a great challenge! I loved how my initial misgivings about the chocolate mousse were completely annulled when the mousse turned out so delicious. Also I thought it was interesting how I needed to “study” to get the chocolate pavlova right. That’s what challenges are for! Great stuff, tnx, Dawn!