One of the amazing desserts I assayed for the first time this past Christmas was a Mont Blanc Roulade.
Mont Blanc is a classic French dessert consisting of scribbly threads of chestnut mousse piled up into a mountain, and topped with a “snowcap” of whipped cream (and a cherry!). The idea (from Pinterest again!) was to make a sponge roulade with the classic Mont Blanc on top.
Annoyingly, the gorgeous photo on Pinterest had no recipe, so I had to imagine what ingredients to put into the roulade. I settled on a chestnut flour sponge, partly because we had organic chestnut flour from my Mum’s cousin’s farm and partly because it would take the Mont Blanc taste and add a new texture. It was summer in New Zealand so strawberries were obvious, as were raspberries from Mum’s garden.
The roulade is filled with a lick of chocolate ganache, sliced strawberries and the Mont Blanc chestnut mousse, and my only grumble with this is it makes the whole thing a bit beige. Whipped cream inside would be prettier. Mont Blanc mousse is so much tastier! Also, unless you can get a small tin of chestnut puree (or get whole chestnuts of your own to puree) you are going to have a lot of mousse. It’s a slight dilemma.
Another thing I tried is to put a pattern on the exterior of the sponge. This is done by applying a pattern in a coloured mixture to the sheet upon which you will bake the sponge for the roulade. You then cover the pattern with the regular mixture. It’s usually done with a stencil, which I didn’t have, so I tried to make do.A few confessions. I did this without reference to my patisserie book in which I had read the technique but never tried it. Also, I did this with a piping bag, rather than a scrapy stencil. Finally, I got all gung-ho and “she’ll be right” and didn’t have the patience to let the pattern freeze before I put on the rest of the sponge mixture. Then I forgot to drop the tray a couple of times onto the bench to encourage any air bubbles escape the mixture. All this led to things being a little less than beautiful. I also learned that the pattern has to be quite all-over to be seen in a roll!
Here’s what I did. I mixed a little cocoa into a small portion of the chestnut sponge mixture. Then I piped holly patterns on the sheet of paper that I had prepared for the sponge roll. Then I was meant to freeze the pattern but didn’t. Then, I carefully spread the chestnut sponge over the pattern. Then I baked it.
The problem really was that I needed to make the pattern more “all over”, I needed to freeze the pattern so I wouldn’t have been so scared to get the sponge mix into all the nooks and crannies of the pattern, and I needed to drop the tray. And frankly, plain old stripes or wiggles would have looked just as good if not better. Live and learn. In any event, if you want to try this, I have given you appropriate instructions (and recommend that unlike me you actually follow them) below. Meanwhile, here is another food porn shot.
My Christmas dinner guests think I am being insane worrying about the beige and the less than perfect exterior holly leaf pattern, because this thing is drop-dead delicious, but one option would be to add a teaspoon of cocoa to the sponge mix, thus making the mousse and the sponge different shades of brown. Next time, I’m doing that.
But beige inside or not, this dessert is a show stopper for any special occasion! It’s nice and light, not too sweet and if there is anything left over, makes a darn fine breakfast!
Mont Blanc Roulade
Chestnut sponge
ingredients
3 egg whites
4 egg yolks
50g caster sugar
50g flour, or for a “less beige” chocolate roulade, 45g of flour and 5g of dark cocoa
20g chestnut flour
2 tsp cocoa, optional, for patterns (though this will only work on a non-chocolate coloured roll!)
20g caster sugar, extra
mixing
Prepare a baking sheet with a large rectangle of baking paper which has been marked with a smaller rectangle measuring 22x27cm.
Remove 1 tbsp of the caster sugar from the 50g amount. Whip the egg whites and the bulk of the caster sugar until stiff peaks form. Whip the egg yolks and the remaining caster sugar until just foamy. Fold the egg yolk mixture into the egg white mixture. Fold in the combined flours (and cocoa if using).
If you want to try a patterned roulade, combine 1/2 cup of the mixture with the optional cocoa, mixing until smooth. The sponge mixture will deflate, but don’t worry about that. Pipe patterns (such as wavy stripes) over the marked rectangle on the bake paper, then freeze the tray until the piping is solid.
Spread the sponge mixture onto the baking paper (over the piping if you did this, making sure that the sponge mixture gets into the crannies!) using the rectangle as a size guide. Smooth the sponge mixture to an even depth with a palette knife. Drop the tray from about 10 cm high onto the bench several times to encourage any large bubbles in the sponge mixture to escape.
Bake the sponge at 180 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes or until the surface of the sponge is lightly golden and springs back when lightly touched. Sprinkle with the extra caster sugar, cover with a clean tea towel and roll the sponge into a roll, working from one of the short edges. Let cool like this.
Meanwhile prepare the chocolate ganache and Mont Blanc mousse.
Chocolate ganache
ingredients
65g dark chocolate, chopped
65g cream
mixing
Heat the cream until nearly boiling. Stir in the chocolate. Stir gently until all the chocolate is dissolved and the ganache is smooth. Chill until the ganache reaches spreading consistency (not runny!)
Mont Blanc Mousse
This will make more mousse than you need – but chestnut puree usually comes in 400g tins! Just pipe the leftover mousse into serving dishes for another dessert – it keeps for several days.
ingredients
100mL milk
1/4 tsp ground vanilla bean
400g can unsweetened chestnut puree
400mL cream, divided into a 100mL portion and a 300mL portion
75g sugar, divided into a 50g portion and a 25g portion
1 tbsp rum
mixing
Heat the milk with the ground vanilla bean until the milk is boiling. Add the chestnut puree and whisk over heat until smooth. The mixture will be thick. Add the 100mL quantity of cream and the 50g quantity of sugar, stir until combined. Cook the mixture, stirring all the time, until the mixture boils. Refrigerate until cool.
Beat the 300mL quantity of cream with the 25g quantity of sugar until stiff peaks from. Remove 80g of the mixture and reserve for decorating the roulade.
Remove the chestnut mixture from the refrigerator and stir in the rum. Gently fold in the whipped cream.
Assembly
Mont Blanc Mousse
250g fresh strawberries, washed, hulled and sliced
80g whipped cream (reserved from Mousse recipe)
extra strawberries (and raspberries, redcurrants, etc), for decorating
sprigs of baby mint leaves, for decorating
gold leaf, mixed with a little vodka, for decorating
silver cachous, for decorating
icing sugar, for dusting
Unroll the cooled Chestnut Sponge and peel off the paper. On the “inside” of the roll (the side with the concave curve), spread the ganache in an even layer. Lay the strawberries evenly over the ganache, then spread with the Mont Blanc Mousse to about 1cm thick, Don’t try to spread the mousse right to the most curved part of the roll, there won’t be room for it when it is rolled up.
Working from the most curved end of the roll, gently roll up, taking care not to push the cake too much because this will cause the mousse to ooze out of the ends of the roll.
Place the roll, edge side down on a serving platter.
Load about half of the rest of the Mont Blanc Mousse into a piping bag fitted with a wide spaghetti nozzle (I recommend you get one, but if that’s not possible, just load it into a disposable piping bag and, instead of cutting the pointy end, pierce the bag several times near the end with a wide skewer so that the mousse will be forced into long thin threads through the holes.
Starting at one end of the roulade and working side to side in a wide zigzag motion towards the other end of the roulade, pipe strings of mousse. Repeat until you have a nice mound of mousse threads on top of the roulade.
Load the reserved cream into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle. Pipe stars of cream in varying sizes down the spine of the roulade, and pipe a few stars on each end of the roulade to pretty them up. Decorate the top of the roulade with berries and mint leaves here and there. If desired, using a fine paintbrush, paint gold leaf onto the berries. Sprinkle the silver cachous over. Dust the Mont Blanc Roulade with icing sugar to serve.
Enjoy!xxx
