Chocolate Glazed Hazelnut Mousse Cake

I thought I better post this before it's too late and one year had come and gone. And knowing me, IT"S POSSIBLE!

Well, for those who knows, last weekend was Ed's B-day and I decided to bake a cake for him since we're not doing anything big. I wanted something a little more sophisticated and not too mundane. After looking around my cookbooks and magazines, I decided to use one from Gourmet Magazine, Feb 2006.

The recipe was surprisingly easy (I mean, comparatively to others with similar end result!) and the overall final product was very pleasing. I did follow the recipe to the "t" and even toasted those hazelnuts and rubbed those darn skins off, just so I didn't mess up a good recipe!! Yah, I was that anal! The only problem I had was the ganache. I had never ever made ganache but I figured it was easy coz I make chocolate truffle cake all the time. Oh yah..I was wrong. The chocolate was not tempered right and didn't have that smooth glossy look...I could have re-tempered the chocolate but I was just too lazy that being the FINAL touch to the cake. Besides I was kinda running out of time! (ok...I was just lazy)

The cake was wonderful! It has all the different textures of chocolate and when I say it's simply heavenly, it's not even close to that. The shortbread base was so very good. It wasn't too dry and had a lot of hazelnut flavor in it and also bits of hazelnuts. And as for the mousse, oh boy, it was creamy, fluffy, light and so smooth!! Of course, there's mascarpone in it, and who can find fault with that, right??? :) Not forgetting, there's also Nutella in it!! Oh yah....all chocolatey goodness!! With the ganache, it's like a very much upgraded ice-cream cake without all that heaviness aftertaste.... WONDERFUL!!!

This is a definitely a must-try recipe for chocolate lovers who wants a sophiscated cake instead of those regular chocolate cakes out there!! It does take a little more patience than I'm used to but it was for a b-day..;) And luckily for me, I have a KitchenAid to help with that mousse job, I don't think I could have achieve that state of "mousse-ness" without that machine. It just made the mousse so much fluffier and lighter. The plus side to this recipe is that the only baking needed was just the base and that took all but 20 mins!! :) What a steal! Oh yah, we were too greedy to take pic of a single slice...Oh well....next time...;)

However, for all the "sophistication" of this exceptionally great chocolate cake...we ended up putting sparklers all over it for Ed and Ethan to blow them out!! Well...at least Ethan enjoyed the sparklers...he was too tired to have the cake, besides, we didn't want him to load up with sugar in the middle of the night.....hehehhe