Concorde Cake My Way

I made this before, for my friend's birthday. The last disc broken up when i'm about to arrange them. Damn! one disk took me 2 hours to bake. Anyway, aside from the last broken disk (and of course i didn't give it to her) it actually great, the combination between meringue and dark chocolate mousse. I ended up eating half of that 20cm cake at 9 pm, after dinner! Hahaha i do realized that was a enormous calorie i had, and as i remember, i think i got some sugar-high back then XD

This time, again, and i don't know why, i chose to bake this again for another friend's birthday. I made smaller version, though. Cake-sliced size, about 4cm x 8cm. And i think it tastes better when you put it in a fridge for a while. Fyi, Concorde Cake is a satisfying dessert of the chocolate meringue disk and creamy layers of chocolate mousse, topped with meringue tubes. Because this is a Concorde Cake My Way, i made this more simple, just layers of sweet meringue and dark chocolate mousse with a dust of cocoa. Simple, but it will make you yell "Oh, my goodness!!"

Concorde Cake My Way

For Cocoa Meringue

280 gr (6-7) egg whites

500 gr icing sugar

3 tbs cocoa powder

For Dark Chocolate Mousse (you can prepare this the day before)

200 gr dark chocolate --> choose any of your favorite dark chocolate, the darker the better :)

200 ml cream

200 ml whipped cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp salt

Meringue :

1. Prepare baking sheet. Draw shapes on the baking sheet as you want. It'll be easier later where to pipe. I drew 4cm x 8cm rectangles on mine. Fit about 9 pieces of rectangles, and still remain some space, so i drew more 2 lines 1cm x 28cm. Reverse the baking sheet, pipe on the other side.

2. Sift together the icing sugar and cocoa powder. Beat the egg whites with a electric mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the sugar-cocoa and the continue beating until stiff peaks form and the meringue looks glossy and smooth.

3. Preheat oven to 110C. Fit a piping bag with the large plain tube (or you can just cut your piping bag about 1cm). Fill with the meringue, pipe it over the prepared baking sheet, starting from the edge and working inwards filling the edge. With the remaining meringue, pipe into the long lines.

4. Bake for 2 hours, until the meringue is crisp and thoroughly dry. Let them cool and carefully peel off the paper.

Dark Chocolate Mousse :

1. Chop the dark chocolate into a smaller size. Put it in a microwave-save bowl. Microwave for 1 min, until they half melted and stir them. The heat will melt the rest.

2. Boil the cream with saucepan. When you starting to see bubbles, pout them over the melted chocolate. Let stand for 1-2 mins. This is what we called ganache.

3. Meanwhile, whip the cream with electric mixer. Make sure the cream is cold, and much better when your

bowl and beater is cold too. Fold in gently the whipped cream to chocolate ganache. Mix in vanilla and salt. Let it cool, and put in the fridge. You can eat it right away, or maybe you should wait for the meringue for better :D

Assembling :

With rosette piping tube, fill the mousse and pipe on a meringue. Top with another meringue, and pipe the mousse again. Place another meringue on top. Dust the cocoa powder.

If you like it, you can decorate the cake with the thin lines meringue. Cut them into small pieces and put the on top of the meringue, dust with cocoa powder. There you go! Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours before serving.

Taraaaa~ you have your concorde cake!

Cinnamon Apple Galette, For Two :)

Here's the scenario in my head when i'm about to post this.

Sunday morning. Just me and you. We have bunch of time, but we got nothing to do.

But we still gotta eat, right? :)

So, what will i make for our lazy sunday?

Hmmm...

1. This thing have to be easy and simple.

2. Comforting.

3. Do not take a lot of ingredients.

4. No fancy appearance (less work, that's why it called LAZY sunday)

And, Cinnamon Apple Galette it is.

It meets all my requirements.

We can enjoy this at tea time with milk tea, watching some dvd, laughing and lazy-ing (still with the lazy thing)

What a perfect sunday!

But reality came back to me.

I made this when i took half-day off from my office.

After i finished baking and cleaning, i hurry took a shower, pack my galette, enjoy this when i have time at office :(

But i'll definitely make this scenario become a real one someday :)

love the crust!

Cinnamon Apple Galette, for two

For pastry crust

80 gr flour

1/2 tbs sugar

pinch of salt

1/4 cup (55 gr) cold butter, cut in dice

3 tbs ice water

For filling

1 sour apple (i use granny smith), slice thin

cinnamon, sugar, and water, just enough to taste and soak the apple

For crust glazing

Egg yolk

Milk

Coarse sugar

1. Place the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl, mix well

2. Add the cold butter. If you don't have a pastry cutter, just use spatula or butter knife to mix the dough. You may use your hand, but you have to do it quick. Otherwise, the butter will get warm from the heat of your hands. The secret of making a good pastry crust is the cold butter.

3. When the dough looks like bread crumbs, add the water. Mix well, until you can shape the dough into ball.

4. Divide the dough ball to 2 portion. Flatten, and rest the dough in fridge for 1 hour, or more. Just until you ready to bake them.

5. When you're about to bake them, prepare the filling first. Mix water, cinnamon, and sugar together. Coring the apple, and cut them into 1/4inch wedges. Soak the wedges into the cinnamon sugar liquid.

6. Make the glazing. Mix egg yolk and milk together.

7. Preheat oven to 180C. Prepare 30cm x 30 cm baking tray with baking sheet on it. Get the dough ball from fridge, roll them into circle at baking tray (enough for two small galette) and arrange the apple wedges in a circle, leaving about 4cm edges free at edge.

8. Brush apples with cinnamon sugar mixture. Fold dough into center, you can fold it easily if the dough half-cold. Brush the crust with egg milk mixture, and dust coarse sugar over the dough. It's the sugar that make this galette have the rustic look :)

9. Bake about 15-20mins at 180C. Then change your oven to griddle/rotisserie mode, which means the heat only come from the top oven. Raise the oven temperature to 200C about 10mins or just until the crust turn brown. Mine took exactly 30mins.

10. There, you have the rustic crispy crust with soft cinnamon apples. Feel the contrast between them.

crisp and soft, together as one

I love contrast. Just like i love sweet crisp meringue with smooth dark chocolate mousse.

Wait for the next post :)