Wednesday 17 February 2016

Cooking: Blueberry Lemon Mousse Cake

On my relaxing day Monday, I decided to make a dessert since we'll be home for several days (hopefully). I found some marshmallows from the summer and a recipe online to use up said marshmallows which was perfect. The recipe was for a blueberry lemon mousse cake and it was a complete disaster.

I honestly don't know where I went wrong. Ok, part of my going wrong was switching white chocolate with regular chocolate chips because the chocolate ended up overpowering the lemon and it doesn't go as well with blueberry. If you're like me and don't like white chocolate therefore don't have white chocolate laying around the house when you go to cook, I would just eliminate the chocolate rather than substituting it with regular chocolate chips.

My second problem was that the marshmallows would not melt for me. The recipe says to 'melt marshmallows in microwave or a pot over the stove, slowly.' I'm not sure if it's because I had regular marshmallows instead of the mini ones but they just wouldn't melt. I tried the microwave and the stove and they just formed a giant glob that wouldn't melt down. Until it burnt. I finally got some of it melted a bit but then it was impossible to mix evenly with the cream. It was a big sticky mess and there are hard marshmallow bits in the 'mousse' layers. Again, this recipe was not my thing.

My third problem was with the cake itself. This one is my fault. I've never cooked sponge cake before so I didn't know what I was doing. I followed the recipe but the problem with that is that it's British and all in grams but I didn't notice that when the oven said 200, it meant Celsius, so I put the oven on 200 degrees Fahrenheit. After 20 minutes, it clearly wasn't done so I left it in for probably another 20 minutes but I don't think it really cooked in the middle. And then I dumped the first layer of mousse on top as it was ready and I was worried it would set in the bowl with the marshmallow bits.

All in all, a complete diastor that we're stuck eating for the next few days. Not a highlight of my baking career. If anyone wants to visit to help us finish our half-cooked blueberry chocolate mousse cake, you're more than welcome!

Cake layer: Make sure the temp is actually F and not C!
Chocolate ready to go.
Marshmallows ready to be melted. Except they refused to melt. Stupid marshmallows.
Chocolate layer. It's actually delicious on it's own.
Blueberry layer. Also delicious on it's own. Perhaps I just need to scrape off each layer individually.
It actually layered and set nicely. Too bad it taste weird all together and the cake bits aren't completely cooked.
I will eat it anyway.

2 comments:

Dave said...

Sometimes you have to chalk the whole thing up to a learning experience. I'll bet the next time you want to make this it will be a raging success. Sometimes melting marshmallows is best done in a double boiler because the heat isn't direct. Melting them in the microwave works okay if they have some liquid along with them. imho

Anonymous said...

I love that you show us your cooking "failures". No other blog I know does this....they only show the wonderful things they are doing. I'm sure they have their "failures" as well.