Bake-a-Long Week 6: Botanicals Week!

The Bake-a-long continues! And this week's is an absolute shocker...

It's been two months since I last posted! A combination of work, COVID, and Christmas haven't left me with a great deal of time. But I'm back to continue the bake-a-long saga!

In what has certainly proved to be one of the more interesting themed weeks of the season, the bakers were tasked with creating Spiced Buns for the Signature, a Lemon and Thyme Bundt Cake Technical, and a Layered Floral Dessert Showstopper, which had to contain a significant baked element. 

I've had my eye on the recipe for Hermine's Chocolate and Raspberry Mousse Jelly Cake for quite some time now, which immediately settled which of the three challenges I'd be attempting this week. I didn't anticipate struggling as much as I did, but with the benefit of hindsight it's actually a miracle I got as far as I did. Let's get into it!

Now, I was going to face one critical problem. With the exception of the sponge layer, all the components to this cake contain gelatine to set the various mousses and jellies. A vegetarian alternative to gelatine is agar agar, which is derived from a type of seaweed. As you'll see, substituting gelatine for agar agar powder was at once not as complicated as I'd feared but also a little too effective for this cake. 

The first component to prepare was the jelly bowl, as this would take the longest to set. By simply combining water, caster sugar, agar agar powder and raspberry flavouring, a raspberry clear jelly mixture comes together. This is then poured into a bowl and left to cool and set in the fridge. 

With the clear jelly setting, the next step was to prepare the rosewater genoise sponge by folding flour and rosewater into whisked eggs and sugar. Once baked, the sponge is cut into a 20cm disk, brushed with a grenadine syrup, and popped into a cake ring lined with acetate! 

Once the cake layer was in the bottom of the cake ring, the next layer to prepare was the white chocolate mousse. A little double cream is combined with the agar agar and heated to active the setting agent. This cream mixture is then folded into melted white chocolate. To complete the mousse, the remaining double cream is whisked to soft peeks, before the cooled white chocolate mixture is folded in and the resulting mousse is spooned on top of the cake layer in the cake ring and left to set in the fridge. 

I was well into the baking project by now, but the only thing to do was to press on and prepare the raspberry mousse by combining hot raspberry puree and agar agar. The resulting mixture is then folded into whipped double cream, and once again spooned on top of the white chocolate mousse layer and left to set. 

Nearly there! The final layer to prepare was the mousse glaze for the top by combining double cream, caster sugar, vanilla, and agar agar in a pan, leaving the mixture to cool to a pouring consistency. The glaze is then poured on top, and once again left to cool. 

With the cake layers setting, it was time to attempt the jelly art, which you've probably already noticed yielded a shocking result! This is where the agar agar presented it's first real problem. When it came to inserting the petal syringes, the clear jelly in the bowl began to tear and rip. The agar agar had set the jelly too well, it had gone cloudy and it was too firm for me to properly work with. The next issue was when it came to injecting the coloured jelly, also made using the agar agar, into the clear jelly to form the petals, the jelly began to set in the syringe! Once again, the agar agar had done it's job too well! But it was a learning curve if nothing else!    

Putting a chocolate collar on this cake was another first, but I wasn't very keen on the overall effect of this either. As you'll soon see, I couldn't let this be the way I left Botanicals Week... more on that soon! 

Gibby x