28 January 2011

January 2011 Challenge - Délicieux Gâteau

So I'm finally back on the Daring Bakers trail, and what an amazing challenge to come back to!

Blog Checking Lines : The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.

The Biscuit Joconde Imprime is a patterned, thin sponge intended to wrap around a dessert. It gives a marvellously intricate look to any simple enough dessert, and is actually quite easy to make. It consists of a paste with which the pattern is made and a sponge batter which makes up the bulk of the imprime. We were given the freedom to use any dessert we wished, we were required only that the Imprime was around it!







After quite a lot of thinking and reading of others attempts, I decided to make the full amount of batter for the Joconde Sponge, and 1/7th of the amount of the Joconde Paste in two different colours. Below I've given the full recipes. I choose to have a layered dessert, with shortbread, a chocolate mousse and a raspberry mousse. I haven't included the recipes for these, but might post them fully at a later date. The raspberry mousse recipe can be found here as the topping for a cheesecake. The chocolate mousse was an Alton Brown recipe, and the shortbread recipe was one of my own.


Ingredients :

Joconde Sponge :
85g Almond Flour
75g Icing Sugar
3 large Eggs
3 large Egg Whites
10g Caster Sugar
30g Butter
25g Cake Flour


Joconde Paste :

200g Butter
200g Icing Sugar
7 large Egg Whites
220g Cake Flour / 170g Cake Flour
Colouring / 60g Cocoa Powder

Method :

Joconde Sponge :

01. Sift together almond flour, icing sugar and cake flour into a large bowl.


02. Whisk the egg whites and caster sugar to firm, glossy peaks.



03. Add the whole eggs a little at a time to the almond flour/icing sugar/cake flour mix.






04. Fold 1/3 of the whites into the mix to slacken it.



05. Fold in the rest of the whites gently.



06. Melt the butter over a low heat.



07. Fold the butter into the mix gently.



08. Leave the mix aside.

Joconde Paste :

01. Cream the butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy.



02. Add the whites in a little at a time until all incorporated.




03. Fold in flour or flour and cocoa powder, depending on the colour you want.



05. Tint the paste if required.


Joconde Imprime with Entements Dessert :

01. Use the paste to make a pattern about 5mm thick on a silicon mat.


02. Place the mat in the freezer to harden the paste.

03. While waiting, prepare your mould. I wrapped clingfilm around a springform tin with the bottom removed, and put a layer of greaseproof inside to make it easy to remove.


04. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celcius.

05. Pour the sponge mix over the frozen paste and spread evenly.


06. Bake the Imprime for approximately 15 minutes, or until the edges are starting to crisp and it springs back when pressed.


07. Lay down a sheet of greaseproof paper and sprinkle liberally with icing sugar. Flip the imprime onto this.


08. Cut imprime to desired height.

09. Add bottom layer of dessert to mould.


10. Place imprime inside the mould, flush to the sides. It is pretty flexible, so this should be easy to do. If necessary use multiple pieces to get all the way around, making sure to press them together.


11. Add dessert fillings, leave to set, decorate.


12. Remove springform tin.


13. Remove greaseproof paper.



14. Slice and eat!


I can honestly say, this was one of the nicest dessert I've made in years. My friends enjoyed it too, to a point that one of them broke into French to express how delicious it was.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Beautiful!! The raspberry mousse looks and sounds so delicious. Great job on the challenge!

Stephanie said...

Your design and your flavors are so awesome. It makes me want to go make another jaconde right now

Eat the Love said...

I love how you totally drew awesome drawings on your sponge. I went with a more abstract color splash on mine. I also love how your friend broke out in french to describe how delicious it was. That's hilarious.

astheroshe said...

AB FAB!

Laura said...

This is beautiful . . . I love how your joconde incorporates the colors of the fillings. And the layers of filling are so neatly done. Great job.

Lea said...

It's sobeautiful! Love your topping