A chocolate cake for those who love the combination of dark chocolate and berries. I was lucky enough to find cherries in my local market, but if you can’t get them, you can substitute something else: for example, raspberries would also work perfectly with dark chocolate.
Chocolate cake with dark chocolate mousse and cherries:
Fudgy chocolate base
Ingredients:
200 grams of dark chocolate (I use Madagascar from Callebaut)
100 grams of butter
200 grams of sugar
4 eggs
1 tablespoon of flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Prep:
- Melt the butter and chocolate in a bowl over a water bath.
- Take the bowl off the heat and stir in the sugar.
- Beat the eggs together a little and stir them into the batter a little at a time.
- Finally, sift in the flour and salt.
- Spread the dough in a cake ring or spring form (20 cm) and bake it for 25-30 minutes at 175 degrees. The cake will appear slightly underbaked in the middle – this is meant to be set when it is refrigerated.
- Put the cake in the fridge overnight.
Milk chocolate ganache
Ingredients:
200 grams of milk chocolate
100 grams of cream
and a bit of salt
Prep:
- Finely chop the chocolate and put it in a bowl.
- Put the cream in a small saucepan and heat it to just below boiling point.
- Pour the hot cream over the chopped chocolate and let it stand for 2 minutes.
- Then stir vigorously in the centre of the bowl until the ganache gathers and becomes glossy.
- Add a little salt.
- Spread the ganache on top of the cooled chocolate base and refrigerate while you make the chocolate mousse.
Chocolate mousse
2 sheets of gelatin
200 grams of good, dark chocolate
2 egg yolks (room temperature)
3 deciliters of whipping cream
¼ teaspoon salt
Prep:
- Soak the cottage cheese in a bowl of cold water for at least 10 minutes.
- Finely chop the chocolate and melt it in a bowl over a water bath. When the chocolate has melted, remove it from the heat. Let it cool down a bit – it is important that it is not too hot.
- Add the egg yolks a little at a time. It will seem a bit firm, but that’s okay. Now put 1 deciliter of your whipping cream in a pan and heat it to the boiling point. Take the pan off the heat, wring out the water from the cottage cheese and stir it into the hot cream.
- Now stir the cream into the chocolate mass a little at a time – stir until the mass is completely smooth. Then stir in salt.
- Whip the last 2 deciliters of whipping cream until light foam. Add the whipped cream to the chocolate mass a little at a time (I always do it in about 4 batches) – you may want to give it a little beat to start with to get it well mixed together, but otherwise, just gently fold in the cream.
- Spread the chocolate mousse on top of the ganache and put it in the fridge for an hour while you make the cherry mousse.
Cherry mousse
The recipe makes enough for one layer on the cake – if you want to have mousse bombs on the cake, I would make a slightly larger portion.
Ingredients:
3 leaves of gelatin
250-300 grams of frozen cherries free of stones
Juice from one lemon
125 grams of sugar
3 dl whipping cream
Prep
- Soak the houseplant in cold water (minimum of 10 minutes).
- Put cherries, lemon juice and sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. When the juice boils and the sugar has dissolved, remove the pan from the heat and strain off the juice.
- Now stir the cottage cheese into the hot juice. Allow the juice to cool to hand-warm. Whip the cream until very light foam. Stir a little of the cream into the warm cherry juice. Repeat until everything is folded together.
- Spread the mousse on top of the chocolate mousse and put it in the freezer for at least four hours (and preferably overnight).
- Decorate the cake with whatever you want: I have decorated the cake with mousse bombs (I had some leftover with milk chocolate), milk chocolate cremeux and forest sorrel.
