It’s a good workout. Very good workout. Crazy workout. I hope you brought
your guns for this one. Hey, I’m chef
Gregory Baumbgartner. I’m the pastry chef
at E.P. Los Angeles. Today, we’re gonna make Not Your Mother’s
Chocolate Mousse Cake. We have the devil’s
food cake, chocolate wafer crust,
and mousse on top. So now we’re
going to start mixing our cake base. We have one and a half
cups of butter, 11 eggs, four and a half cups
of light brown sugar, then we have about three
and a half cups of flour, half a teaspoon
of baking powder, and then half a teaspoon
of baking soda as well. Then we have warm coffee,
about a cup and a half. And then we have one and half cups of
cocoa powder, a teaspoon of
vanilla extract, a cup and a half of
milk chocolate, one and a third cup of
dark chocolate. So before we begin today,
we’re gonna go ahead and pre-set our oven
to 325 degrees. So for our eggs, we’re just going to whisk
them and also throw our vanilla extract
into our eggs. So now that we
have our eggs and they’re slightly whisked. We’re just going to take
our brown sugar, feel free to just break it up
into the eggs as you go. My mom used to make as a
kid this frozen chocolate mousse cake. Chocolate wafer cookies
that were crushed up, and then just put mousse
on top and freeze it. I thought it would be a
little bit interesting to go ahead and
do a new rendition of it. Don’t worry, this may
look intimidating to you. Don’t freak out,
it’s okay. It’s all going to come
together in the end. Now that our brown sugar
is in with our eggs, you just want to whisk. And you’re gonna still
see some clumps. It’s okay. Now that that’s
ready to go, we want to hydrate
our cocoa powder. I’ve gone ahead and
used coffee. You can feel free
to use water, milk, anything you
want to hydrate. You just want to
make sure it’s warm that way it
hydrates properly. You wanna whisk to get
out all those clumps, it’s very important. The eggs and
the sugar are mixed. First thing we’ll add in is our cocoa paste, using
a spatula, just to make sure that there are no
clumps on the bottom.. Put that to the side. You just wanna go ahead
and get a pot about this size, a quarter of the
way filled with water, and bring it to a boil. Go ahead, and
get our chocolates into another bowl. That way they can be
ready for being melted. And put it over
top of our pot to expedite the process
of boiling. And make sure that
you use a spatula to occasionally stir. I’m going to
remove the pot and place it onto a rivet. And because our
water’s hot inside and I’ve covered it,
that water and that steam is going to
continue to heat the bowl and also continue to heat
through the chocolate. Now, we’re just gonna
slowly whisk in our melted chocolate. And put that to the side. We can go ahead and
begin to melt our butter. When the butter is about,
we could say, half to a quarter
of the way melted, you can go ahead and
take it off the heat. You just wanna
slowly whisk in your melted butter. If you pour in all
your butter at once, it’s not necessarily
gonna mix very well. Okay, all of our butter
is incorporated. Now I recommend folding
in the flour by three parts. I went ahead and took the extra step
to go ahead and add our baking soda and baking powder
into our flour. If it does begin to
clump, by using the whisk You can actually
get most of it out, if not all of it. Let me go ahead and spray a half sheet
tray quite liberally. That way it doesn’t
stick to the sides. So now, just going to lay
it flat onto our tray ready to bake. Want to kind of guide the
base with your spatula. Scrape down your
bowl all the way. Now that our base is
completely in the pan, we’re just gonna
place our case in the preheated oven
at 325 degrees. Just gonna let it bake
for about anywhere from 45 minutes to an
hour and a half depending on the type of oven
that you have at home. So this next part of the
cake we’re gonna make is the chocolate
wafer crust, chocolate wafer cookies
that were crushed up. So the bigger pieces,
great, the smaller pieces,
great. We’re gonna use
about half of this, which is roughly
two cups. We’re just gonna place that into
a separate bowl. On the side, we have
maybe about a quarter cup of light brown sugar,
and then just a pinch of salt, I would say about
an eighth of a teaspoon. Work the sugar, salt and chocolate cookie
together. And next I have half
a cup of melted butter. What I’m looking for here is something that’s
a little bit more wet. As you can see it’s
nice and glossy. If you have
clumps of sugar, it’s not a big deal. You’re going to
be throwing this back in the oven. So that sugar will melt. And it’s going to
just create a nice caramelization on
the crust. So next, I’m going
to go into my form. I definitely want
to press on it. That way the crust holds
when I go to bake it. And once it comes
out of the oven, at 325 degrees for
about 15 minutes, it’ll be nice and stable,
and you don’t have to worry about it
crumbling up back on you. So now that our cake
is out of the oven, I went ahead and pulled out our chocolate
wafer crust as well. As that’s finished and
done. If you don’t have
another form at home, it’s not a big deal. You can actually use
a bowl or a plate, and kinda just set it
down on top of the cake. And using a knife,
just cut around, and that way you
can pull it out. Okay, so next, I’m just
going to push down. I’m gonna use
two of these to build up into my cake. You don’t wanna twist or turn, because you have
that tendency to do that. And then everything
will tear, I think. Remove the tray. You’ll see here
is I have a nice, beautiful, dense cake. It’s nice and
moist on the inside. Now I’m just gonna
hold off and reserve those while I
build the moose, and then we can assemble
the cake totally. We’re gonna start with
about 14 egg whites. Next we have food
grade gelatin sheets. If you’re lucky
enough to find them, which I highly
recommend using these. If you’re looking for powder gelatin you
want to use 200 grade. I would say it’s
probably about two tablespoons worth of
cold gelatin, and you’ll use it the same way that
I do in this recipe. We also have water here
for our gelatin sheets. Next we have about
six cups of melted milk chocolate. There’s about four
egg yolks here. We have about two
cups of cream, about a cup of milk,
and finally we have a cup of sugar with
one vanilla bean. So now I’m going
to go ahead and strip my vanilla bean. Just scrape the edge
of my knife, all the way down. Put just the seeds
into my sugar. Now, with my fingers, I’m just going to massage
the vanilla beans in and we’ll begin to whip
our egg whites. What we’re doing is
making a French meringue. French meringue
is very basic. It’s not cooking
anything. It’s just adding sugar
into your raw egg whites. Now what we’re
looking for in our egg whites is for it to come to
a loose peak. And what that means
is they just start to hold peaks. You can actually see them
developing in the bowl. Next, we’re gonna
go ahead and add our milk into a pot. We’re just going to
keep that on low. What we’re going to be
doing is making a ganache with our chocolate and
our milk. At this time, my milk
It’s coming to a scald, a little bit of a boil. That’s okay, don’t worry. People may tell
you not to boil or scald milk or cream. It’s not that
big of a deal. I’m going to also
bloom my gelatin. We’re resaturating
with moisture. I’m gonna let this sit,
upwards five to six minutes to saturate
all the way through. Remember, cold water
with maybe an ice cube or two is perfect. Now that our gelatin
in completely bloomed, we’ll add that first
into our milk. I just suggest giving it
a light squeeze making sure that there’s not to
much moisture but there’s enough moisture where
it’s still saturated. Gonna give it a mix and make sure that gelatin
dissolves into your milk before you
do anything else. Now we’ll begin to
assemble our ganache with our chocolate and
our milk. So we’re gonna incorporate it
again very slowly. As you can see I have
a nice beautiful glossy chocolate ganache. I’m gonna add in our
last bit of sugar. Our egg whites, perfect. As you can see, not broken, glossy, and
they have stiff peaks. So I’m just going to pour my egg yolks straight
in to the chocolate. This ganache is actually
still quite warm, it’s probably about 105
degrees Fahrenheit. So, it’ll actually kinda
kill off any bacteria. So, that I’m gonna
do is go ahead and begin to fold in my
whites to my chocolate. When you’re folding
something in, especially into
something that’s hot, you kinda wanna do
it in increments. So, for this, I’m just gonna add
about one-fourth, and then I’ll add in
the other three-fourths. Okay, so, everything
is nice and cohesive. No streaks. Are ready to
incorporate the rest. As you can see, it’s
nice, beautiful, glossy, and actually has
quite a build to it. And now, we’re gonna go
ahead and whip our cream. Specifically for
this one, you know you want to use
heavy whipping cream. We’re actually gonna
whip it to where it’s probably considered
soft peaks. Because, at that stage,
that’s the amount of air that you’re gonna be
able to get in there. So you can see, I got maybe about
medium peak on that. And that’s perfect. Now, again,
in increments. I’m gonna do a fourth. And then the rest. All right, now
the mousse is done, and we’re ready to begin
assembling the cake. We have the devil’s
food cake, we have the chocolate
wafer crust, and we have the chocolate mousse
we’ve just assembled. At this point, we kind of
want to move a little bit fast. So, we’re going
to go ahead and add our mousse in,
to the form itself. Just a little bit. I would say no more than
two and a half cups. Next, we’ll add our
first layer of cake. I recommend
doing it upside, that way the cross
is on the bottom. And I just place that
right in the center. Next I’ll go ahead and cap off that first layer
of cake and I’m going to put my last layer of
devil’s food cake. And yet again, cap off
with my chocolate mousse. And at this point, I’m just going
to go ahead and stick it directly
into the freezer. I want it to freeze for
roughly about 12 hours. And as I said, my mom used to
serve this frozen. For me, I let it thaw
out on a plate, and I like to enjoy it
when it’s actually room temperature. So you can pull it out
once it’s finished. Okay. So now we have our
finished result. And I still have some
of that excess crumble. Don’t think I was
going to waste this. You can take some of
that excess crumble that you had and just put
it directly on top. Have fun with it. Who cares? Looks great. This is certainly not the
cake that my mom made and I definitely cannot
wait to dive right in. Look at that,
beautiful layers. Really good. The mousse is nice and
silky. It’s actually pretty
fucking good.