0 Lemon Mousse Cake

This month's Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She challenged us to make a biscuit joconde imprime to wrap around an entremets dessert. A joconde imprime is a decorative design baked into a light sponge cake providing an elegant finish to desserts/torts/entremets/ formed in ring molds. Entremets is an ornate dessert with different layers of cake and pastry creams in a mold. The joconde imprime is the outside cake wrapper of the entremets dessert.



The only requirement this month was to learn the technique of the joconde imprime. We could make any size or shape entremets and we were allowed to fill our entremets with anything we liked. When the challenge was revealed to us in the DB private forum, I was quite excited to try my hand at something so beautiful. Those fancy decorated cake-wrapped desserts in patisseries have always fascinated me. I just assumed that it was difficult and best left to the professionals.

At first glance making an entremets seems intimidating. And I won't lie. There are many steps. But each step was not difficult at all.

The cake wrapper is made of two different cake batters - the decor paste and a sponge. The decor paste is spread thinly (or piped out) onto a silicone lined sheet pan and a design is made in the paste. I made diagonal stripes using a cocoa decor paste. The lines are a little crooked and unevenly spaced since I was doing it free hand.



To make sure the design isn't disturbed, the designed paste is placed in the freezer to harden a bit before pouring the sponge cake batter over it. Gently spread out the sponge cake batter evenly without disturbing the decor paste design.



After it has baked and cooled slightly, turn it out of the pan. Let it cool with the decorated side up. My cake is sitting on a powdered sugar dusted sheet of parchment paper on a wire rack. The powdered sugar helps prevent the undecorated side of the cake from sticking to the parchment and the parchment keeps it from sticking to the wire rack.



Determine how much cake you will need to create the wrapper. (The formula for the circumference of a circle comes in handy.) I cut some strips of parchment paper as a template and fit them inside my 8-inch diameter ring mold to make sure it was correct. Then I used those strips of parchment as a template for cutting out two strips of decorated cake.



Fit the decorated cake strips around the inside of the ring mold (decorated side out). Make sure the strips and the bottom cake round fit snugly in the mold. I used an 8-inch cake pan with a removable bottom as my mold. Now it's ready to be filled.



I made a lemon mousse to fill my entremets. The mousse was a combination of homemade lemon curd (a great way to use up some of the egg yolks leftover from making the joconde) and whipped heavy cream. And it was all fortified with a bit of gelatin. The cake strips and rounds were soaked with a tart and sweet lemon syrup. Then I topped it all off with a thin layer of gelatinized lemon curd.



As you can see from the photo below, for the middle cake round I just pieced together an 8-inch diameter round from whatever cake I had leftover after cutting out strips of the decorated joconde. I didn't want to waste or make more cake than I needed.



I think I did a decent job for my first try at a joconde imprime and entremets. The finished cake was so pretty. The joconde sponge cake was delicious, moist and very easy to work with. The mousse was light and lemony. And the lemon curd topping really gave the dessert a big lemon zing.

This was a great challenge. I would have never tried this on my own. Now that I know how simple it is to do I plan on making entremets of all flavors. Thanks to the host Astheroshe and all the Daring Bakers!

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.

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