Daring Bakers' Challenge: January 2011

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge is hosted by Astheroshe from the Blog, accro. Astheroshe chose Joconde imprime /entremets as the challenge for the month. Her challenge recipe is based on recipe from Chef John O, from The International Culinary School in Atlanta, Georgia USA.

My jaw dropped when I saw this challenge. I had never heard of this confection, let alone attempted to make one. Though Astheroshe hastened to assure us that the various components of this dessert are easy to make, the many steps and separate recipes were intimidating. I was relieved that the Gastronomist Economist was able to do the challenge with me; I certainly didn't want to face it alone! Ultimately, it took the GE and me nearly 7 hours to prepare, bake, and assemble the completed challenge. We decided little could entice us to make it again.

I did learn one key lesson, though: check the Daring Bakers' forum for tips before making a challenge like this one. Then I would have learned that we really didn't need to make the whole recipe for the joconde paste.

Joconde paste, tinted a lovely green for Tu B' Shevat (the new year of the trees).

If we hadn't made the whole paste recipe, we wouldn't have made the mistake of slathering the whole mess of it onto our silpat mat to form the design.

Wave design "imprinted" into the paste.

Which would have meant that the paste was only 1/4 inch thick (like it was supposed to be) instead of nearly an inch thick, like it ended up being.

Another view of the paste, which is clearly way too thick.

Planning to serve the dessert at a Tu B'Shevat seder (Tu B'Shevat is the Jewish New Year of the Trees), the GE and I first planned to form a leaf design with the paste. This would have probably worked pretty well if we had used a pastry bag to create the leaves, but we decided to use the easier design option: spread the paste on a silpat mat and carve the design with a knife. The thick goop was not conducive to delicate carving, and we soon abandoned our leaf design for wavy lines.

This would have probably worked pretty well if there weren't more joconde paste than sponge cake batter.

Spreading the sponge cake batter over the chilled joconde paste design.

As it was, the wavy line design was barely noticeable in the baked cake. But at least there was a lot of it!

The baked cake, with wavy line design. Sort of.

Faced with a sea of cake, the GE and I decided to make one large dessert for the seder and a couple of mini desserts for us. We didn't have biscuit or cookie cutters and we hadn't gone to the hardware store to cut PVC pipe for mini moldes, so we wracked our brains for ideas of how to create the mini versions. We had the good idea to cut the bottom out of a yogurt container, but then we remembered that one option for the challenge was to use a trifle dish. Why not use wine glasses for sophisticated individual trifle dishes?

The cake cut and fitted into a "sophisticated individual trifle dish."

Because it's a pain in the butt, that's why. I don't own a trifle dish, but I believe they at least have straight sides, making it somewhat easier to fit strips of cake along the inside. Wine glasses, on the other hand, do not lend themselves to neat concentric circles of dainty sponge cake strips. Indeed, one must cram scraps of cake into the many gaps created by the glass's curvature, spoiling the effect of the design.

Inside the imprime, before filling with entremets.

Oh, well. At this point, we were six and a half hours into the process, and I for one couldn't care less.

The challenge didn't specify which filling we should use for the entremets, and the GE and I went a little crazy making fillings. First, we made pastry cream. Then, we made white chocolate cream. Then, we made a berry sauce. Oh, yeah - and the GE bought lemon curd.

The entremet: lemon curd, white chocolate cream, pastry cream, and wild berry sauce.

So, we spooned varying amounts of these four fillings into the indifferent embrace of our joconde biscuit imprime.

We were glad we didn't try this with the larger version; all of the fillings were essentially liquid and not suited for slicing. The GE ultimately made a delicious mousse to accompany the lemon curd, berries, et al, and you can read about it on her blog.

The full-sized version, filled with a very tasty mousse.

After freezing the pre-cut sponge cake strips, the GE fitted them into a 10-inch springform pan, which she then filled with mousse (and curd and berries, and, heck, probably pastry cream and white chocolate cream, too).

Mmmmm.....overly complicated dessert.

The whole kit and caboodle went into the fridge so the mousse could set during dinner. Sadly, the GE needed to leave early, so we snuck away from the seder guests to take a picture of the final dessert.

Hurrah! It slices!

All of the seder guests (except, ironically, the GE, who didn't get a slice) greatly enjoyed the finished dessert, which (obviously) tasted better than it looked. Not one slice remained, as guests took the last decadent slices home for absent partners.