Zomg!

This was my first month taking part in the Daring Bakers, and bajesus, did it scare me.

As compared with the 2 or 3 previous challenges I’d seen, this one struck me as completely different, and definitely something I’ve never done before.  But then, that’s the whole point, right?

It took me literally all month to get this done (in fact, came close to having to beg off!) but forced my way through it with, in my opinion, astonishingly good results.  For me.

Not bad eh?

This challenge was issued by Astheroshe from the blog accro.  She provided a basic recipe for the outer cake, but everything else was left up to us to jig around however we saw fit.  Being a bit of a novice here I didn’t do anything outrageous, but I did have fun with some small variations.

Per Astheroshe:

Joconde imprime /entremets. A joconde imprime (French Baking term) is a decorative design baked into a light sponge cake providing an elegant finish to desserts/torts/entremets/ formed in ring molds.

Basically, this dessert is a flexible almond-flavored cake that you bake into a thin sheet, then cut into strips and bend into a ring.  Then you fill it with something delicious.  I was skeptical, but really it ended up sounding much harder than it actually was.

After royally screwing up my first batch of batter, I was able to churn out a second, much more acceptable batch that yielded the above strips of joconde.  I still had two issues, though: first, it was a little unclear to me exactly how thick these strips were supposed to be.  Mine ended up about 1/2 inch thick at most, and that seemed a little on the anemic side to me.  Second – probably having something to do with the skinny strips – I definitely almost burnt them into crisps.  The directions said to cook for 15 minutes, but to keep an eye on them.  I think at most mine baked to 10, and I’m glad that I caught it fast enough; you can’t see it here, but the edges of these were charred.  Whew!  Regardless, I was able to come out with 2 strips for my mold and had enough batter left for the bottom of the joconde as well.

Does anybody know how I was supposed to get the edges to stick together better?  They were, and still are as completed, a little loose.  Despite that, i was very impressed at how flexible the pieces were; you can see how they bent easily to accommodate the spring form pan without any cracking.  I thought it was pretty cool that something already baked could be so malleable.  Very neat!

Since this dessert as an entire entity is known for having layers, I committed myself to two different flavors: the bottom flavor, bavarian cream, and the top layer, chocolate mousse.  I’d never made either of those before, but I figured “hey, if I’m going to do one thing I’ve never done before, I may as well do three.”

Outside of me using what probably ended up being 3 million eggs (all separated) and the bavarian cream being a little time consuming, they weren’t too crazy; I just had to have a little patience.  And boy-howdy, it was worth it.  Even if I had ended up disliking the entire dessert (I didn’t – the dessert is great), at least the fillings were completely worth it.  I think I need to work on my form some (and figure out what exactly a bavarian cream should look like >.>), but for a first stab, things went great.

The down side of all of this is that I didn’t make enough of either filling.  You can tell from the first picture that the filling doesn’t come all the way to the top of the joconde, and it should.  Live’n’learn!

All in all this was a really fun project, and actually something I might try again.  After conceptually getting it down and getting tips from others who took on the challenge, I’d be willing to take another stab and do a better job or just be more creative!  Besides…it was delicious. ^_^

Like I mentioned before, I didn’t do anything too wild, but below are the links to the recipes I used for the chocolate mousse and bavarian creams.  Let me know if you have better recipes or recommendations for doing them “right”. ^_^

• Bavarian Cream
• Chocolate Mousse