Rouge Entremet


Hi there! I just survived a busy 2-week! I was neck-deep buried in pounds of fondant, raspberries, white chocolate, gallons of cream, you name it, all for the wedding of sweet couple friends (sneak peak on Instagram @the.bs.life). Post and tutorial coming soon.

Today I want to share this red hot cake I made a few weeks back for sis-in-law's Big 4-0 birthday celebration. 


I was told that it was only a family celebration, so I wanted to go crazy with new flavor combination at first (your family makes the best people to experiment with - new cake that is) . Think caramel, mango, passionfruit, hazelnut, all in one cake. But I learned later on that they have some family members visiting from Hongkong and London, in time for the birthday celebration, so I quickly changed the original plan as nothing is worse than serving a failed experiment cake on new people. It sets the standard, you know.



I was perusing one of my favorite cake sites and I gotta be honest, I like looking at the pictures, reading the recipe to find out what components they're made of, rather than actually wanting to try the recipe most of the time, though I did try some of them in the past. I decided to try this one called Rouge. It consists of crunchy almond praline, chocolate joconde, chocolate mousse, pistachio cream, and raspberry glaze. It reminds me so much of the infamous Ambroisie by Hidemi Sugino, which is one of my all time favorite cake to make. So in one hand, it is new because it is new recipe, but on the other hand, I sorta knew what to expect since chocolate and pistachio is a failed-proof combo.

To be honest, what drew me in at first was the red color. I've always wanted to try making a red glaze and most of them are using fondant. This one is the standard translucent glaze and raspberry puree, which I have done a lot in the past with mango and other flavors



I made my own almond praline this time. Not trying to be fancy or anything, but it is literally caused by lack of planning. I thought my fancy Walmart had it (hey, they carry Escargot!), but they didn't and it was too late to order it through Amazon prime. I will do a separate post on how I did this, but it is pretty straight forward, just needs a little patience

While making the cake, I had the urge to put a layer of raspberry confiture on top of the joconde, as I thought it would definitely benefit from it, but I resisted and followed the recipe instead.
I didn't have raspberry extract, so I put a tiny bit of gel red food coloring to make the color more vivid.

I would say the raspberry glaze is there only for the look, I like using the chocolate glaze better just like Mr. Sugino did, but this cake was also a winner! What makes it different than Ambroisie is that this has a crunchy layer underneath, that itself makes the cake tasted different than the former.


The recipe below has been adapted to the method I am familiar with and with ingredients that's easily accessible. The recipe calls for two kinds of pistachio paste, roasted and fresh, but I only have the roasted one, so that's all I used. The brand I used is Sevarome and it is quite potent, so I didn't feel the need to add the fresh one. The chocolate mousse recipe is creme anglaise based, and using both bittersweet and milk chocolate, resulting in smooth and not-so-bitter mousse. It doesn't use any gelatin to stabilize it, which I prefer, but it stands up beautifully after it sets.

Since I am making the cake into a big cake instead of individual serving like the site did, I used two layers of the joconde instead of one. I also made a raspberry soaking syrup to brush onto the joconde, which the original recipe didn't call for.

Rouge
Adapted from cakechef

Chocolate Joconde
110g almond powder (I use the fine kind, the same one to make macarons, such as this one)
110g powdered sugar
110g egg yolks
50g egg whites
210g egg whites
65g sugar
85g all-purpose flour
30g cocoa powder (this is the brand I have been using for glaze, cake, and everything)
40g butter, melted
  • Sift the almond powder and powdered sugar together and put it in a mixer bowl
  • Add egg yolks and the 50g egg whites
  • Mix until thick and pale yellow
  • In a separate mixer bowl, make meringue with 210g egg whites and sugar
  • Fold the meringue into the almond mixture in additions
  • Then fold in the melted butter
  • Bake in a half-sheet pan at 220C (425F) until done (my oven went error at this point, turning off the timer and the heat altogether, but I would say it was around 8-10 mnts.)
30°B Sugar Syrup 
20g sugar 
15g water
  • Boil together and let cool
Sirop d'imbibage
20g  30°B Sugar Syrup
15g water
15g eau-de-vie de framboise
  • Mix all the ingredients together 

Crunchy Almond Praline
88g feuilletine
64g bittersweet chocolate, (I used Valrhona Alpaco, use any good bittersweet chocolate)
40g almond praline paste
  • Melt the chocolate and mix it with almond praline
  • Fold in the feuilletine
  • Spread it in the bottom of 8 3/4" cake ring or any mold of your choice

Pistachio Cream
140g milk
40g egg yolks
35g sugar
3.3g gelatin plate or 1 tsp. powdered gelatin
100g heavy cream
50g pistachio paste (thinned out a bit with tiny bit of water)
  • Make bavarian cream by heating the milk in a saucepan until it boils
  • Whisk the yolks, sugar, and pistachio paste
  • Temper the yolk with the boiling milk and put the whole thing back in the saucepan
  • On a low heat and continuous stirring, bring the mixture to 84C
  • Add the soften gelatin plate (you need to soak it in cold water first), or the powdered gelatin (add a little bit of water to dissolve it, then melt it for a few seconds in the microwave)
  • Strain it and cool in an icebath
  • Whip the heavy cream until soft peak and fold it into the cooled egg mixture
  • Pour into 8" round mold or cake pan that has been lined with plastic wrap (for easy removal) and put it in the freezer.

Chocolate Mousse
110g heavy cream
110g milk
60g egg yolk
18g sugar
195g bittersweet chocolate, (I used Valrhona Alpaco, use any good bittersweet chocolate)
65g milk chocolate (I used Valrhona Jivara, but you can use any good milk chocolate)
455g heavy cream
  • Mix the 110g heavy cream and milk in a saucepan and bring it to boil
  • Whisk the egg yolk and sugar until the sugar dissolves
  • Temper the boiled cream to the egg yolk mixture and put it back in a saucepan
  • Bring the mixture to 84C, stirring constantly, on a low heat
  • Combine both chocolate and melt it
  • Pour the hot creme anglaise on the chocolate and mix well
  • Whip the rest of the heavy cream until soft peak and fold it into the chocolate mixture
  • Use immediately

Red Raspberry Glaze
Enough for 8 3/4" round cake

3 cups translucent glaze, use the recipe in this post
180g raspberry puree
red food coloring
  • Heat the translucent glaze and add the raspberry puree and red coloring. Mix well
  • You can also make this in advance. Just heat it in the microwave and stir well. Avoid creating air bubbles
To Assemble
  • Cut the joconde smaller than the cake mold. I used 8 3/4" cake ring to assemble, and cut the cake into 8" round
  • Assembling everything in the cake ring, assemble in the following order: crunchy almond layer, chocolate joconde, soaking syrup, chocolate mousse, cake, syrup, thin chocolate mousse, frozen pistachio cream, chocolate mousse
  • Freeze everything at least 4 hours or overnight.
  • Unmold the ring by heating the outside with a torch or hair dryer. Put it back in the freezer while getting the glaze ready
  • Heat the glaze and let it cool to 38C
  • Pour the glaze on the frozen cake, place it in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours before serving to let everything thaw.

5 comments:

ymme said...

Hello, congratulations on your wonderful cake and thanks for the good explanation. I'm a fan of your blog and I follow you too. I'd love to bake one of your recipes but the big obstacle is the language. Is it not possible to install the "language selected" item on your blog. I speak a little English but I do this via google translate.

Regards
Ymme

Bertha said...

Ymme: Thanks! I'll ask my hubby to look into that. Thank you for your suggestion. Hope you can try one of the recipes soon!

Unknown said...

Hello, did you know you posted this on my birthday? :)
Do you still continue this blog? I don't really even know how I got here... it would be funny if you saw this.

WARMEST SALUTATIONS TO YOU :P

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bertha said...

Krysalin: Hmm... true, I didn't realize it, and yes of course I can see your comments :)