Chocolate Mousse and Praline Entremet

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Chocolate mousse and praline entremet is a delicious, silky recipe that would fit a special celebration in your family. Use quality ingredients for success.

Last week was my husband’s birthday so I attempted to make him an entremet.

For the ones who do not know what an entremet is, the Wikipedia explains it: “an entremet is a multi-layered mousse-based cake with various complementary flavors and varying textural contrasts.” Yes, sounds fancy and very European but it is also very delicious.

I worked two days to put it together, and as much as I try to say that it was not a very difficult one to make, the recipe has multiple steps that required time and patience.

My husband wanted a chocolate cake, but if you know me, I cannot go with just a cake and some buttercream, I have to create something that it will be hard to forget…well, this was the case for this recipe.

The entremet has the following layers:

• A praline bottom
• An insertion of Dacquoise cake
• Vanilla Cream
• Chocolate mousse
• Mirror glaze

The entire cake is frozen, glazed with a beautiful mirror chocolate glaze and decorated with your favorite things. However, the cake is served at room temperature.

A section of the cake looks like this:

How to make the Chocolate mousse and praline entremet:

 Preparing the praline first:

The praline is made with caramelized sugar, hazelnuts and almonds, butter and dark chocolate.

You will need to roast the nuts first and allow them to cool before you use them further.

Sugar is caramelized and mixed with the roasted nuts, then cooled on parchment paper.

It will look something like this:

The final step for the praline is to grind it in a food processor until you obtain an oily paste, like a nut butter.

Note: It’s best to divide the mixture into three parts and grind them each for 5 minutes at a time to avoid overworking your food processor.

The Praline bottom of the cake:

Place the softened butter and the chocolate in a saucepan and melt them together.

Stir in the praline and let cool until the temperature drops to 73.4F/23 ° C.

Draw an 8inch/18cm diameter circle on parchment paper and fill the circle with the praline. Place the parchment paper inside the freezer.

Dacquoise cake layer:

This layer is made with sugar, egg whites and almond meal and baked briefly for 10-12 minutes at 170C/340F in a 6″ springform cake pan on parchment paper, then cooled on a rack.

Vanilla Cream layer:

This cream has a little bit of gelatin, because it has to be quite stiff as we will use it as a center of the cake, over the Dacquoise cake layer.

It has heavy cream, vanilla flavor, some sugar, egg yolks and gelatin.

After you make it, you pour it into a 6″ springform cake pan (use the same one you made the Dacqouise cake) and freeze it over night.

Chocolate mousse layer:

The chocolate mousse layer is made by following different steps.

First, you need to mix the sugar and the egg yolks together.

The second step is to heat up the heavy cream to the boiling point and set it aside.

Melt the chocolate to a 113F/45C. Add the heated heavy cream and the egg yolk mixture and mix everything together to create an emulsion.

Fold the whipped cream into chocolate mixture and set aside.

To assemble the cake:

Take the Praline bottom out of the freezer, which should be sitting in the 8″ springform cake pan. Keep it in the same springform cake pan.

Add 1/3 of your chocolate mousse and spread it over the bottom.

Come with the Dacqouise insertion cake and place it in the middle of the springform.

Then take the vanilla cream from the freezer, that should be in the 6inch springform cake pan, and place it over the cake insertion.

So far, so good, right? You should have something like this:

You can see it on the picture above. Come with more chocolate mousse and cover the cake with it, smooth the surface of the cake with a spatula and place it in the freezer.

Mirror Glaze:

After few hours (my cake was in the freezer overnight)  make the mirror glaze, which is heavy cream, glucose(or corn syrup), water, sugar, powder cocoa and gelatin. (follow the instructions on the bottom of this article for ingredients, temperatures and time).

Glazing the cake:

I placed the frozen solid cake on a rack sitting on a baking sheet and poured the glaze over the cake to cover completely.

I refrigerated the cake, then decorated it with some chocolate decorations and edible glitter. My husband wanted me to write Happy birthday in Romanian for him, so I did!

I still need to work on my decoration skills when it comes to writing nicely, but my husband was happy with it and loved the cake!

Interested in other recipes of cakes/entremets?

Festive Cakes and Tortes For The Holidays

Cream cheese lemon coconut cake 

White Chocolate Hazelnuts Dacquoise Cake

A few notes regarding this recipe:

• Measure precisely all ingredients using a scale. This is a professional recipe and precision is mandatory.
• Use quality ingredients, like heavy whipping cream, fresh eggs, nuts, good dark chocolate.
• Follow the instructions exactly. I put a lot of effort into explaining how to make this cake from the beginning to the end and if you follow the order of making each layer of the cake, everything will be ok.
• You cannot make this cake in only few hours, because each layer requires some time in the freezer. My best advice is to start the cake with a day or two in advance, so you have the time to build all the layers properly.
• Professional cakes, like this one, are usually frozen and then glazed with the mirror glaze. If you try to glaze a warm cake, the glaze will melt the chocolate mousse.

Happy baking!