Martha's Cake o' the Month - February

I know you've all been sitting on the edge of your seats, anxiously awaiting the next installment of my experiment - baking each of the monthly cakes from Martha Stewart Living's January 2006 issue. Well, the wait is over! Once again, the process was a challenge, albeit for different reasons, but the end result far more pleasing than the January cake.

The cake for February is the Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake - an appropriately indulgent cake for Valentine's Day, I thought! Like last month, this recipe was composed of several recipes - a cake recipe for the base, and 2 different chocolate mousse recipes for the top layers. I won't get into too much detail as to why our cakes became double chocolate mousse cakes, it might horrify the most powerful amongst you and do permanent damage to others, but let's just say it involved a very sick toddler, sticky chocolate all over the floor, and a brand new and scarily powerful small appliance. Enough said!

The baking of the cakes was simple enough, if a little bit annoying in that I had to seek out 8 3.5" diameter ramekins which I now own for eternity. The recipe performed beautifully, and the miniature cakes were beautiful cooling in their ramekins. On to the mousse... I started with the bittersweet (darker) mousse and everything went well until it was time to pipe the mousse onto the cakes. At that point, my sick little one decided she could no longer be entertained by daddy, toys, books or anything else, and that only mommy would do. So, I placed the fluffy mousse into the refrigerator to wait until I was able to come back to the assembly job. Big mistake! By the time I was able to return to the job, the mousse had been chilled so much that it was no longer "pipe-able". In fact, it was much more the consistency of buttercream. I grabbed my trusty offset spatula thinking that I would apply the mousse as I would frosting, but quickly learned that mousse, even when very cold, still does not behave like buttercream! I then decided to embrace the look I was getting (more "rustic", less "sophisticate") and go with the flow.

The first mousse was done, then the aforementioned disaster with the milk chocolate mousse was upon us. I will say no more.

Given that my little cakes were now looking much more like cupcakes than triple layered mini masterpieces, I decided to continue with the look and top them with delicious Guittard sprinkles (jimmies) instead of the chocolate shavings as directed by Martha. The end result? Incredibly rich, chocolatey and completely delicious. Although my version was not truly complete or as refined as the source recipe, my little cakes were a fantastic epilogue to a stressful, but filled with love, Valentine's Day.

For your reference, this is what the cakes were intended to look like:

and this is the more rustic, handcrafted version from chez buzzville:

Other notes:

1. a tough recipe to take on unless you have several uninterrupted hours on your hands (key word being "uninterrupted")
2. scotch tape does not adhere to parchment paper... save your cursing and try masking tape from the start!
3. all of the individual components taste fantastic - consider you now have recipes for a yummy chocolate cake, dark chocolate mousse, and milk chocolate mousse that you can use individually as well!

Comments

[Anamaria]

I think your more rustic version looks delicious! And I love your "cake of the month" feature--I might bake one or two of those right along with you! I hope Brynne is better soon, too.

[molly]

Martha's ARE beautiful...but I do think yours have a certain element of charm and personality that hers lack!

[Gillian Greding]

Loving your cake baking experiment... so fun and funny too! :) Martha's may look divine, but as long as your's taste like hers look then that's all that matters. Love your blog... glad I stumbled upon it!

[Adriana]

This is fantastic. It's like getting a pro chef test the recipes before I try them.

I had a look at those but was a bit intimidated. Now thanks to you I know all the secrets! Thank you so much. I might just give it a go.

[Passions & Distractions]

I almost licked the screen! I think yours look really really cute! Now that I've gotten the February fix, I'm all excited to see March's treat!

[abbyjane]

Hey thanks! I was actually waiting on the edge of my seat for your next completed cake masterpiece! I love love love chocolate mousse and I don't have hours of uninterrupted time so perhaps one layer would do me.

[Gina]

You always make me so hungry!

[Sandy]

I'm so glad you tried this cake as I have been contemplating it as well. I was thinking of making it as one big cake though. I suppose that would be pretty hard to cut, but it would mean not buying the eight ramikins that I have no other use for. I also followed your link to the recipe and discovered that Martha now has videos on her website. It made quite a difference seeing her make the cake too, makes it seem less daunting.

[Tiff]

So good to see that someone else has given this recipe a whirl. We are also taking the Year of Cakes challenge and are planning to give it a go sometime this week... We have bumped into other people on the web who are also doing this... after we survived the Jan lemon cake we started a flickr group so we can check out what others are doing on this challenge! If you want to check it out go to http://www.flickr.com/groups/yearofcakes

[cally]

I nearly wet my pants laughing at the story of how triple became double... and I even started a new folder on my computer called "funny blog stories" cause I don't want to forget.

Love your version of the cake best, made with love!

[kimberly]

Yummy! My Valentine's plan was to make those too, but then I read the little note at the end of the recipe saying they were not for pregnant women due to the uncooked eggs. Boo hoo! Total disappointment! I guess I have to wait...