Michel Rostang's Double Chocolate Mousse Cake: French Fridays with Dorie

This week I found a real winner of a recipe while participating with my French Fridays with Dorie online cooking group.  There have been some recipes that I've loved ... our first recipe, the cheese puffs ... and the apple cake has been baked numerous times in our home.  In fact, I should get busy with another apple cake because I have a bunch of apples in my fridge that need to be used.

But this week's recipe .... ahhhhh!!!  Heavenly!!  (And I'm a picky chocolate person.)  I didn't have a chance to try Michel Rostang's Double Chocolate Mousse Cake last week cause my life has been insane recently and I decided I'd rather do the chocolate cake then the scheduled chicken recipe for this week.

I do not own an 8 in. springform pan ... only a 9 in., so I ended up doubling my recipe and then I used two small (probably about 4 in.) springform pans for the leftovers, so I was able to try all three versions of the cake.  (The cookbook gives three ways that this cake can be made/served.)  I left the bottoms on all my pans & just buttered them well.  In the future, I think if I wanted to make sure the cakes came out pretty & onto a serving platter, I'd just cut some parchment paper to fit the bottom of my pan.  No problems with cooking the cake with the bottom of the pan.  Also, I'm not a coffee drinker, so I substituted water, a healthy tablespoon or so of vanilla, and a little hazelnut syrup for the coffee.  I couldn't taste any of the hazelnut in the finished product, but I might add even more vanilla next time.  I had also considered subbing hot cocoa for the coffee but decided against it since hot cocoa mixes usually have dried milk and other things added to them.  Another FFWD baker did try hot cocoa & had success.  The firm/glossy egg whites seemed to be a hang-up among a lot of members in the group.  I beat mine until they had soft peaks.

I poured batter into the bottom of all 3 pans and baked the "crust".  The remainder of the batter is then refrigerated.  When the crusts had baked & cooled, I poured more mousse batter on top of each crust.  (This recipe uses the same batter for the crust & the cake which makes it super easy once the batter is all made.)  I picked a small pan to leave "raw" meaning the crust was baked but after I poured more batter on top of the crust, it was just refrigerated and not cooked anymore.  I chose another small cake to bake again and serve warm.  It was delicious.  Very moist, but after trying it, I wondered if it was worth the work for something that tasted a lot like a flourless chocolate cake, which is a little easier to make.  For my 9 in cake, I also baked it all the way, but chilled it for several hours before serving it because Dorie writes in the cookbook that this is her favorite way to eat the cake.  This was BY FAR our favorite way too. (I also had some friends stop by and try all three ways ... they too prefered the all baked & chilled version.) It was like a very dark, fudgy, moist, heavenly ... cake.  It doesn't really have a traditional cake texture and I wouldn't really compare it to a brownie either.  This cake needs no to ice cream or anything to detract from it's wonderful-ness.

{Baked all the way & served warm.}

{Baked crust & "raw" mousse on top.}

{Completely baked & chilled ...

the favorite way to enjoy this cake!}