The Daring Bakers’ April 2011 challenge: Maple mousse served in an edible container

Yes folks I'm a Daring Baker now, and here it is - my first Daring Bakers’ challenge!
The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favourite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

Ever since I started blogging three years ago I wanted to join The Daring Bakers but it didn’t make much sense since my first blog was and is in Croatian.
It took me years to finally decide to start blogging in English. I must admit, The Daring Bakers where the main reason for starting this blog.
As you can expect I was very excited and curious about my first challenge. I couldn’t wait for the challenge to reveal, and then there it was - a maple syrup mousse with bacon containers.
Boy was I disappointed, I mean WTF, bacon and maple syrup couldn’t possible work together. Or could they? And after all, this wasn’t challenging one bit. I‘ve made mousses on many occasions and with all kinds of ingredients so in my case this was a familiar territory. Most importantly, there was no real baking in this challenge. Only really challenging thing was to get my hands on some good quality maple syrup. Well that wasn’t an easy task. Maple syrup isn’t very popular in Croatia and you can only buy it in best super markets and in whole foods stores. Usually it’s regarded as somewhat exotic and it costs a fortune. At first I was thinking of replacing it with plain old honey or agave nectar but in the end I managed to find maple syrup at reasonable price. I’m no expert on maple syrup but this one I got is graded with “grade A” so I guess that means I had a lighter syrup, right? Nevertheless it tasted very good and was deep amber colour.

Luckily bacon wasn’t mandatory ingredient in this challenge so I decided to skip it altogether and do something sweet. I just wasn’t ready to try this combination since maple syrup is so sweet and bacon, well, isn’t. :)
I decided to keep things simple and made a classical pie crust filled with maple syrup mousse. I added some dark chocolate ganache to the filling ‘cause I thought mousse would be too sweet on its own. I guess I was really prejudicial to this mousse. I was so convinced that it’s going to be too sweet and without a character I almost didn’t give it a chance. Well I was totally wrong and mousse came out wonderful. It had a really special aroma; it tasted like nothing I ever tried before, and you could say that this was a love at first bite.

Now that I’m in love with maple mousse I’m definitely going to try mousse and bacon combination, I’m thinking this could work nicely. ;)
Thank you Evelyne for sharing the recipe, it’s a keeper!
As far as recipe goes there was absolutely no problem with it. I had to make some changes with the way gelatin was added to the eggs and maple syrup mixture. The gelatine I was using was supposed to be dissolved in the cold water so that’s what I’ve done. Also, I cut the recipe in half and that’s it.

INGREDIENTS

for the mousse

120 ml/4 fl. oz. maple syrup

2 egg yolks

180 ml/6 fl. oz whipping cream

1 teaspoon gelatin powder
2 - 3 tablespoons water

for the almond cups

200 g/ 7 oz flour

30 g/ 1 oz ground almonds

65 g/ 2,5 oz sugar

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

100 g/3,5 oz butter at room temperature

1 egg

for the chocolate ganache

100 g/3,5 oz dark chocolate

100 ml/3,5 fl. oz. whipping cream

1 tablespoon butter

DIRECTIONS
for the mousse

• Place maple syrup in a heat proof bowl and put it over a larger pot of simmering water.
• Heat the maple syrup until it dissolves.
• In another bowl combine egg yolks, add some of the heated maple syrup to temper the yolks.
• Add egg yolks mixture to maple syrup and continue to cook (over double boiler or a pot of simmering water) whisking constantly. You should wish until you get nice, light yellow, custard like mixture. Remove it from the heat.
• Sprinkle gelatin over bowl of cold water and leave it to dissolve.
• Combine dissolved gelatin with egg yolk/maple syrup mixture and set aside.
• Whip the cream and then combine it with egg yolk/maple syrup mixture. Do this gently with spatula or on a low speed with mixer.
• Refrigerate for couple of hours.

for the almond cups

• Preheat the oven to 180 C/356 F.
• In mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar, ground almonds and pinch of salt.
• Add butter and one egg.
• Mix everything with mixer until you get a crumble like mixture. Continue to knead the pastry with your hands. Form pastry into a ball, wrap it with clinging film and leave it in the refrigerator for half an hour.
• Remove dough from refrigerator. Sprinkle both sides with flour and roll out with a rolling pin into app. 15 x 30 cm/ 6 x 12 inches rectangular.
• Use cookie cutter to trim out 10 - 12 dough discs; they should be little bit bigger than each tart mould you are using. You can use any tart mould you like; I used a 12-hole muffin tin. Line the muffin tin with pastry discs, prick the surface with a fork and line every cup/tart with parchment paper. Fill them with some dried beans or baking beads.
• Bake for 8 – 10 minutes. Take them out of the oven, remove beans and parchment paper and set aside to cool completely.

for the ganache

• In a small pot, combine whipping cream and chocolate.
• Simmer gently over low heat until chocolate melts completely.
• Remove from the heat and stir in one tablespoon butter.

assembling

• Pour some ganache into every almond cup. Leave it to cool down for an hour or so.
• Take maple mousse out of the fridge and put it in the pastry bag. Pipe mousse on the chocolate filled cups and serve.