Building A Lemon Mousse Cake: Gravity hurts us all in the end, I suppose...

This is the horrible picture of what was left of the mousse after 30 minutes:

So my lemon mousse cake was a bit messier than the picture in the book...but every bit as delicious. It was a little better than lemon pudding, but not quite as spectacular as my first lemon mousse attempt. This is in the "Dressy Desserts" section of the cookbook (The Best of Heartsmart Cooking) so I knew I had my work cut out for me. It was only 3 layers, though, so there was hope.

First you make the ladyfingers:

Eggs, separated
granulated sugar
vanilla
cream of tartar
cake flour
powdered sugar (I'd say optional...it doesn't really seem to serve a purpose in an already-sweet cake)

You need a very big baking sheet that can hold two 8-inch round layers of ladyfingers. It's kind of finicky, but you're supposed to take a large sheet of wax paper and trace the bottom of two 8-inch cake pans onto the surface of the paper. (Actually, it's better to make the circle about 8-and-a-half-inches...I'll explain below). Turn the paper upside-down on the large baking sheet. Then scrape the batter into a pastry bag and pipe discs by starting in the middle of the circle and spiraling out to the edge. Making a perfect circle is kind of important or you'll get a icicle-like protrusion in the side of your mousse cake and the mousse layers will fall around it. Or you just cut it off...nothing dire will come of it. It's just not as perfect. Actually, I didn't even pipe because I don't own a pastry bag and plastic doesn't work well. Mostly I thought I could get away with it because in the instructions it refers to another recipe but says you just follow those batter directions and then spread the batter evenly between the two circles. Ambiguous spreading instructions for such a perfect mousse cake...

Anyway, this is actually pretty easy to make:

Beat egg yolks, vanilla, and less than half the sugar for 2 1/2 to 3 minutes (don't skimp, says Alice).
Beat egg whites with cream of tartar at high speed until soft peaks form, then add remaining sugar until stiff peaks form.
Then fold a third of the whites into the yolk mixture
Add half the remaining whites and sift (don't dump) half the flour on top, and fold.
Then add remaining whites, sift remaining flour on top, and fold again.

The folding method is described in the book:

"Scrape a large scoop of batter up the side of the bowl. Lift it above the rest and let it fall gently back on top. Rotate the bowl and continue to cut, scrape, and lift batter without mixing, stirring, or smoothing. It may seem as if the parts will never come together, but they will [encouraging, Alice]. Scrape around the sides of the bowl from time to time and scrape the batter off the spatula with another spatula. Fold until barely combined."

A problem with this is sometimes you don't get a clean cut down into the mousse, and is it okay to cut through the part you just folded to the top? Or should that part be closer to the edge so you fold around it? I mean, it must be okay to cut through your just-folded sections or it'll never actually mix, but it seems so counter-intuitive to cut through the fluffiest part of the mousse.

I digress.

Optionally, sieve with powdered sugar.

Bake in a 400 degree oven for 8-10 minutes, until just golden brown. I'd err on the side of less-golden so you mousse cake doesn't get too crisp or dry. Dry cake doesn't go well with soft mousse. When they're cool, peel off the wax paper. The layers didn't spread during baking so I hoped I'd done alright...

Then take a pastry brush and the tops of the layers with 2 tbsp of rum. Place one layer, rum-side up in a 9-inch springform pan (This way you can just remove the sides of the pan when you're ready to serve the mousse instead of trying to move a toppling structure to a serving dish). Then brush the bottom of the 2nd layer with another tbsp of rum and set it aside.

Make the lemon mousse:
This recipe I've given in another post...lemony pillows of air. Refrigerate it for at least 4 hours or you'll end up with mousse cake soup. Delicious, but not what I was going for.

This is the delicate part. Scrape half the mousse on top of the first ladyfinger layer in the 9-inch round pan. Spread the mousse to fill in between the pan and the layer. This is a problem if your ladyfinger layers didn't spread...apparently they're not supposed to spread, and yet somehow you're supposed to start with 8-inch cake circles of ladyfingers and end up with almost 9-inch circles when you put it all together. So make the layers a little bigger than 8-inch and then it'll be okay to extend the mousse off of the layers. It makes it a lot easier to even the sides of the mousse if you can use the springform cake pan to even it for you.

Now Alice says level the top of the mousse. She says she does this on a cake decorating turntable with a cake comb with a serrated edge...but you really don't need a turntable...and you really don't need a comb. Very overrated. She says you can also use a clean index card folded length-wise (to stiffen it). Hold the folded edge against the mousse while you rotate the cake. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least another four hours.

The last layer!! This gives the top of the cake a beautiful yellow colour, which makes the white mousse layer look very clean and smooth.

Gelatin
Cold water
Strained orange juice
strained lemon juice
sugar

Sprinkle the gelatin over the water in a small cup. Leave at least 1 minute without stirring (funny how some recipes she says this explicitly, but not all. Am I allowed to stir in the other recipes? I wouldn't dare, but it's a little bit of a bright red apple calling out to me...

When it's softened set the cup in a pan of barely simmering water (or microwave on high for 15 seconds...Wonder which one I chose?) to melt the gelatin.

Combine the contents of the cup with the orange juice, lemon juice and sugar, and stir to dissolve the sugar. Set aside until thickened...no time is given...but it should be syrupy. If it gets to thick set it in a pan of hot water (or microwave again for a few seconds on low. It really should be gently brought back to syrup and the microwave should stay out of this whole process. It feels so unnatural...but so convenient).

Since your mousse should be touching the edge of the sprinform pan, you just pour a thin coating of this lemon mixture on top and tilt the pan in every direction to spread evenly. If your mousse hasn't set enough, this is where you get soup...The ladyfinger layers need to stay in place and there should be no movement in the pan.

Chill at least 30 minutes to set.

To serve(!) use a hot, wet, wrung-out towel to warm the sides of the pan for about 30 seconds. CAREFULLY remove the sides of the pan.

A garnish would look really beautiful on top of this...a fresh sliced strawberry, or a few blackberries.

Despite the ragged appearance, it was still so good...

The Sky is Falling (I made a passable lemon mousse)

I did exactly what should be never be done when making mousse...

...I multi-tasked. I was rushed and nervous and my egg whites started boiling, and I made a drastic substitution, but my goodness, it worked. The pillows of fluff that I tasted yesterday were enough to convince me that chocolate is not always the best kind of mousse, or cake, or guilty pleasure. I know it's blasphemous, but dear lord it was a mound of lemon-flavoured heaven. The meringue melted on the tongue, and it was so light because there was no dense chocolate to weigh it, or me, down.

Oh, Alice Medrich, you should write another cookbook. It will be my other favourite. It will be exactly like your other "Chocolate and the Art of Low-fat Desserts" from which I took my birthday toasted hazelnut and dark chocolate mousse cake, but this one will be all lemon recipes. In the introduction to the recipe Medrich even says, "Every dessert chef needs a lemon mousse recipe". This is it. I didn't even think I liked lemon that much. I usually skip over the lemon recipes looking for the next decadent chocolate one, but you have shown me to be naive, Alice. So many wasted years thinking mousse could only succeed in chocolate form.

Yes, I'm done waxing poetic about lemons. Ridiculous, I know.

I did almost everything right:

gelatin
lemon zest
lemon juice
sugar
eggs, separated
vanilla
cream of tartar
heavy cream

When I see 'heavy cream' in a recipe, I turn the page. So I had turned this page a lot. Heavy cream needs to be whipped and needs to expand. Almond Breeze, my milk substitute, does not expand. Basically I replaced heavy cream with milk. I thought my mousse would collapse. If I actually managed to get the egg whites to the elusive 'stiff peaks' stage it would all be for naught. Well, sometimes you just shrug and push your luck.

The recipe: You sprinkle the gelatin over cold water and set it aside until you're ready for it. Then combine the zest, juice and sugar in a saucepan. I really need a juicer, because it's a little cold these days and my hands are a little dry. Lemon juice all over dry hands is painful and only a little short of self-flagellation.

Here was my problem with the recipe: It said to heat this mixture on medium heat and bring to a simmer. In the meantime you beat an egg and egg white until light in a bowl and then pour some of the hot lemon mixture into the egg. Well my lemon mixture didn't simmer and then it boiled so I was extremely careful pouring it into the egg. I was not about to mess this up so early in the game by letting my eggs cook. Then pouring the egg mixture back into the pan, I checked the recipe to see that I was supposed to stir it until it barely started to simmer around the edges. Well it got to about a rolling boil in 5 seconds because I had waited so long for it to simmer in the first place.

This was Alice's fault, but the next part was my fault. I have a very small strainer and you're supposed to strain this mixture (which had thickened up probably too much) into a bowl to remove the lemon zest. This process took about 5 minutes because it had to be done in stages of pouring, straining, pouring, straining. In that time I was praying that the eggs didn't get stuck to the pan I ended up with lemon frittata. Miracle of miracles...

Then you add the vanilla and gelatin to the bowl, which is placed in a larger bowl of ice water. I was also worried that I had taken too long straining and adding the gelatin and vanilla now would be too late. I did it anyway. Perfection be damned.

Then meringue. See first blog-post ever re: chocolate mousse to summarize my fear of meringue. I don't own a stainless steel bowl. I own very nice and, I hoped, heat-proof, bowls but when you're dealing with temperamental (hah!) candy thermometres, 90 seconds, and the difference between salmonella and a happy stomach, it's a little risky to throw caution to the wind. So I threw it in the right direction, but threw it none the less. I whisked the egg whites, cream of tartar, and sugar with one of the beaters from my hand beaters (I need a whisk too I think) and held my breath while I put the beater down to get the thermometre into a cup of hot water by the stove (poor planning in advance on my part). The whites were okay. I don't trust my thermometre. It has wrecked or jeopardized my food in the past, so I stirred with it to help it along a little, carefully avoiding the bottom of the pan that would trick it into thinking it was hot enough. It got...well, close enough to 160 degrees. The book said a minute and a half and then check it. I hate removing the bowl from the water though because if it's not ready then it has all this time to cool down before you put it back in and start counting again. It seems like it'll never get to a safe temperature that way and your egg whites are losing their potential fluffiness...So again, wind/caution, and I removed the bowl without spilling the egg whites into the water in the pot (Oh, I used a big pot instead of a skillet to get more water boiling and heat the eggs faster through the thicker bowl) and beat to what I figured might pass for stiff peaks. Really it was all I could do because the bowl was just about too small for the quickly-rising egg whites. I always under-estimate the size of bowl I'll need for expanding egg whites, but once you're beating you can't stop and change bowls, you need to keep to keep going. So again, prayer helped and only a little egg white flew from the bowl onto various appliances. WAY better than my pumpkin pie disaster.

At this point I realized I hadn't added the milk to the lemon/gelatin mixture like I'd planned. So I hoped it wouldn't make it too runny to add it now, but what choice did I have? Leave it out? Leave milk out of a mousse? Hmm...even I don't have the courage for that yet.

Folding. After all this hard work, how much air would be lost from my meringue? How many clumps of egg whites would remain because I was scared of mixing? This is another reason lemon is better than chocolate. Mocha-coloured chocolate really stands out from white meringue, but lemon is much more forgiving. I tried a new folding technique - scooping under and letting the mixture fall off the spatula toward the back of the bowl, before rotating the spatula back toward me to make another incision. This made a whole lot more sense in terms of 'folding' the mixture over, as it created a nicer hill than when I rotated the whole mixture over and it kind of plopped down on top of itself. Basically I shoved the meringue off the spatula while it was still horizontal and instead of turning the spatula over to follow the falling meringue, I rotated it toward my body. It seemed to work anyway. The nice thing about no whipped cream was that there was one less folding step. It's hard enough beating part of the lemon mixture into the egg whites and then everything back into the lemon mixture.

Finally, it was done. Nothing collapsed. Nothing got salmonella. And the taste?

Oh it was so good. Organic lemons. Amalfi, the home of limoncello and the ridiculous rules for the selection of lemons for their alcohol of choice, would be proud.

So I beg you all. Try a lemon mousse next time.

I think that's enough religious imagery for one day.