Chocolate Mousse aka Snickers Cake

New opportunity to bake a cake. :))

One of my dear colleagues, Eleftheria celebrated her birthday on Monday and I baked this Chocolate Mousse Cake a.k.a. Snickers Cake as she asked for a chocolate cake. 

The initial idea of this chocolate mousse cake came from another dear colleagues, Evi. After I heard that the wish is chocolate cake, I immediately thought of this recipe to start the thinking. I also had some left over (approx. 100 g) roasted peanuts from the Hazelnut Biscotti. Tadaaaam. Here comes the Drunken Snickers Cake with just a hint of rum. The cake has 4 parts:

• Paté Sablée
• Caramel
• Roasted peanuts
• Chocolate mousse

INGREDIENTS  

PATÉ SABLÉE (23 cm / 9-inch round cake form)

14 dkg (5 oz) butter, room temperature
10 dkg (3.5 oz) sugar
2 eggs
24 dkg (8.5 oz) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt

Whisk butter and sugar. Add eggs, whisk until smooth. Add flour and salt. The dough will be very-very soft. Wrap it in plastic foil and put it in the oven for at least 1.5-2 hours or overnight.

As the dough will still be quite sticky, roll it out among floured plastic foils. :))) If the dough is rolled out, put it in a tart form or round-cake form and back to the fridge for 1 hour. If you hurry, you can skip the fridge, but make sure that you fill up totally with baking beans or pearls for the blind bake. Pierce its bottom with knife or fork. Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit (180 degrees) and bake it first 10-15 minutes, then without the beans for another 10-15 minutes.

CARAMEL

1,25 dl heavy cream
20 dkg (7 oz) sugar

Boil up the heavy cream and then set aside.

Mix 5 tablespoon water and sugar in a pan and boil it on high temperature (about 5 minutes). Stir it continuously. When the sugar starts to get brownish, stop the stirring, but watch it closely as the sugar becomes dark brown very easily. Even after you set it aside, it continues to darken. Take it off from the heat when light brown, not yellow. Within the next minutes, you will reach a nice ginger, medium brown color.


Pour the heavy cream in the caramel. Pay attention as the caramel is still very-very hot. Stir it until smooth. Set aside.

ROASTED PEANUT

I loved the idea of how to peel off the skins from the hazelnut. All you need is boiling water, 2 tablespoon of baking soda, hazelnut and 5 minutes. After that you could REALLY peel the skins off easily with your fingers. So simple and so easy. Fascinating. :)) When ready place the peanuts on a baking sheet in a jelly-roll pan and roast them for 15 minutes on 300 Fahrenheit (160 degrees).  


When cold, put them in a food processor to cut them into small pieces. 

DRUNKEN CHOCOLATE MOUSSE

INGREDIENTS

5 dl / 500 g heavy cream
100 g dark chocolate
50 g milk chocolate
200 g nutella
1 teaspoon rum or rum extract (optional)

Melt the chocolate and the nutella in a steam bath and set it aside. Whisk the heavy cream into a whipped cream. I remembered this time that my grandma said: "Never mix whipped cream with even lukewarm substances!!!" So I waited until chocolate is cold, but still soft. Mix the chocolate, rum and whipped cream with a hand-held mixer and it is ready.  

ASSEMBLY

First sprinkle the cake with roasted peanuts, then pour the caramel on it (2-3 mm). At last comes the chocolate mousse. Before serving put at least the cake for 2 hours in the fridge. 

Note: After blowing off all 25 candles, the chocolate mousse got a bit soft. :)))) But the taste was still amazing.