Fancy 18th Birthday Entremets

For their 18th birthday, instead of a cake, my niece requested a triple layer (dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate) mousse that I sometimes make, but fancy enough to celebrate such an important birthday. This is what I came up with.

Inside, there is almond genoise, dark chocolate marquise, milk chocolate mousse, and white chocolate mousse. The outside is mirror glaze, with colors inspired by Acheron, a new character in Honkai: Star Rail that my niece is excited about. The decorations are a caramel almond, a candied orange rind heart, and a gold leafed maraschino cherry.

I served them on a custom two-tier heart-shaped stand, designed to fit 18 entremets for 18 years. It looked nice, but I should have made it slightly less sloped because I got scared that they would slip off so I used double-stick tape to hold them in place.

Valentine Treats

These are little heart-shaped mousse cakes that I made for my family on Valentine’s Day. They are almond sponge and lemon mousse with a raspberry center and mirror glaze and dehydrated raspberry powder on top. I was hoping that they would be extremely elegant versions of my Bleeding Heart Cake, but when we first cut them, the raspberry was too frozen to bleed and when we cut another one later, too much of the raspberry had seeped into the mousse, and it still didn’t bleed. So I still have that to work on.

These hearts were the culmination of an entire day of heart-shaped food that I made for Valentine’s Day, which included heart-shaped raspberry pancakes, heart-shaped pizza with heart-shaped pepperoni, heart-shaped deviled eggs, heart-shaped strawberry gummies, heart-shaped mozzarella pockets, heart-shaped meat pies, heart-shaped beet salad, and heart-shaped cheesy breadsticks.

Raspberry Charlotte

Not as neat as I would have liked it to be, but it does look kind of like a brain, which is a plus in my book.

Ana Northstar Cake

My niece has made up a marvelous imagined universe that centers around the mythical heroine Ana Northstar. For her birthday, she asked for a cake featuring Ana Northstar's wings. Here's the cake I came up with, along with the inspiration drawing of Ana Northstar.

The outside of the cake is chocolate jaconde. Inside is mango mousse with a jaconde rainbow heart inside, which represents Ana Northstar's soul.

The hearts are fresh lime gummies. The orange wings are white chocolate. The green and purple wings are modeling chocolate. The blue webbing on the green wings is homemade pineapple fruit leather.

Raspberry Mousse Cake

I was inspired to make a mousse cake for Valentine's Day, mostly because I've been watching too much of Zumbo's Just Desserts and I want to make fancy things like he makes. I'm not quite there yet.

It's a raspberry mousse with sponge cake on the bottom, and fresh raspberries inside. The decor is fresh raspberries, sugared with white, black, and gold sugars.

Romanov

My French baking book calls this a Romanov. I made it for my Dad's birthday. It's a sponge cake on the bottom and a white wine bavarian cream on top, with fresh strawberries on top and an orange juice glaze. I waited about 3 seconds too long to pour the glaze, so it turned out lumpy, but it was delicious!

Spike Roller Cake

This very pink monster is a mini-boss from Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. It's chocolate cake with milk chocolate ganache icing. The spike roller itself is a tube of dark chocolate with white chocolate chip spikes and milk chocolate mousse inside.

4th of July Entremet

Here's a little entremet I made for a 4th of July party. It's vanilla cake layered with cherry mousse and a cherry jam glaze on top.

Mr. Men / Little Miss Cake

I am not personally a fan of the Mr. Men / Little Miss franchise but my friend Isaac is. The cake itself is layers of thin sponge and lemon mousse. The cloud pattern is baked into a thin cake, like you might for a roll cake. The cloud patterned piece is laid around the interior circumference of a springform pan, then inside of that are alternating layers of sponge cake and lemon mousse. On top is an apricot jam glaze colored with food coloring. I’ve never made this kind of cake before. It was both surprisingly easy to do and quite delicious. For the figures, I wanted to try stained glass isomalt. The black lines are piped with royal icing and then I dabbed the melted isomalt in with a toothpick. It worked really well except that I think you are supposed to then put a layer of clear isomalt over the back to hold it all together. Since I didn’t do this, the royal icing joints were definite weak points. The figures are more or less just sitting on top of the cake, which looked great for a few minutes, right up until the royal icing began to dissolve in the glaze. I have had this problem before with royal icing and various other edible substances, but apparently I haven’t yet learned my lesson. Fortunately, everyone got to admire the cake before we had a Mr. Men structural failure and we ate it very shortly thereafter.

Lego Figure Mousse

For her birthday this year, my niece didn’t want a fancy cake, just triple chocolate mousse cups with Lego figures on them.