The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard.
The recipe is on the Daring Bakers site here: http://thedaringkitchen.com/sites/default/files/u11/44_Chocolate_Pavlovas_-_DB_June_2010.pdf. It was already gluten free so no tweaking needed.
I have made other recipes from the Francoise Payard cookbook and they have all been terrific, so I was looking forward to trying this challenge. Although there were many steps, all the recipes are fairly easy. In terms of the products, I prefer soft pavlovas, so these were too hard and dry compared to my usual merangues, so next time I would make them to my preferred degree of doneness with a soft centre. The disadvantage to that is that they have to be eaten right away, so the dry merangues have some advantages. The best part of this recipe was the mascarpone mousse. It is wonderful, not too sweet, and absolutely full of velvety lushness (as Nigella Lawson might say!) I will make it again, and also the recipe has no eggs unlike most mousses so that is also helpful depending on who is allergic to eggs!
I had more stuff leftover so I also tried a deconstructed version in some verrines. I am freezing them so I will see how well they come through this. Thank you to Dawn for a great challenge and making me explore more of the recipes in chocolate Epiphany. PS – my favoutie recipe in the cookbook is the flourless chocolate cookies, I may do a post on these later.
