20060403

from the best of intentions comes an okay result.

iced coffee mousse cake

i had my mind on making espresso chiffon cupcakes with a coffee mousse filling and espresso-flavoured buttercream; in fact, i did make all three components, but when they came together it didn't turn out as i had expected. the cupcakes were ugly, and the mousse and buttercream boring.

as i had quite a bit of batter left, i made a thin sheet cake, intending to make some sort of swiss roll, but the blipping pan was warped, so the cake came out sadly uneven. again, cake ugly. in an attempt to save that, i cut out circles of the cake and topped them with some of the iced coffee mousse i made from a sara moulton recipe. i added the tiniest of drops of orange extract to the mousse, which rounded out the flavour nicely, and possibly saved the whole venture from being a complete disaster.

11 comments:

Wow - that's persistence! They look much more than OK to me, though. They sound delicious too.

When I saw the title of your post in Bloglines I thought it was going to be about your template! Actually, I think it looks great now... I love the photo at the top and I'm even getting used to all the links and admin stuff being on the right.

Gorgeous. I had an incident with what was to be a swiss roll cake over the holidays. To was too horrible to save, believe me, but I think that this was a fantastic idea, Santos!

By the way, I like the look of the new template.

looks really nice santos. how long did you have to chill the batter in the moulds? and are those chocolate dipped coffee beans?

miss cathy, the cake was quite tasty, so it seemed like such a waste to just chuck it or eat flat pancake-like squares of it.

i'm still unsure about the template. i think the header is overwhelming the other photos. oh well, that's easy enough to change.

hi nic, i'm still trying to figure out the tricks and tips towards a successful swiss roll. i guess practice makes perfect!

deborah, i had the moulds in the fridge overnight, but i imagine 2-3 hours should suffice. those are solid chocolate coffee beans--tasty! chocolate-covered espresso beans would be perfect, of course, but it's sort of amazing how much caffeine these desserts hold as it is.

Santos,

The end result looks great! I think it's fantastic that you perservered and managed to get such a good result! I can't count the times I've trashed attempts that didn't turn out the way I wanted and felt guilty about wasting all the food - great job!

hi anita, i think it was a combination of thriftiness and guilt that led to this. the mousse was a little too good to waste, and the cake tasted fine--it was just ugly!

still have the buttercream. think i'll work on those cupcakes again.

I love how you don't settle! I just made a beautiful (albeit artery clogging) berry cake that I found on a blog, and my springform pan decided not to open up. I got two pairs of pliers and tried to pry it apart- it didn't budge a friggin inch. I felt like I was on American Chopper instead of Everyday Italian. I finally just had to flip it over but the crumb/berry topping came off and one of the edges broke off. All that after 2 figgin hours in the oven. I'm never making that cake again.

(laughing) that's so sad! what happened to the pan?! i'll bet the berry cake tasted great though. you could've taken the pieces and made a trifle of some sort, maybe.

never mind how it tastes!!! it looks great in its simplicity...

Santos - this is a very beautiful looking coffee cake!!

but mita, the taste is more important!

pille, it's pretty isn't it? simple is good :)