Daring Kitchen May 2011 Challenge Revealed!

Last month, I decided to join an online community that participates in monthly baking challenges. The recipe is revealed to the participants on the 1st of the month; the participants have until the 27th of the month to complete the challenge; on the 27th of the month, the participants reveal the results on their personal blogs. Today is the day I get to reveal my experience making a Chocolate Marquise.

I had a GREAT TIME doing this challenge. After reading the recipe, I was a bit intimidated and had a "holy crap, what did I get myself into" moment. After a deep breath, I decided to approach the recipe step by step and knew I could conquer it. The long and the short of this recipe was as follows: make the chocolate base for the mousse, make and freeze a chocolate mousse, make a meringue, make a liquor-infused caramel, make spiced nuts (optional ... so I left them out because nuts just don't belong in dessert in my opinoin). To serve, cut out a portion of the mousse, coat it in Dutch process cocoa powder, creatively decorate a plate with the caramel, put a portion of the meringue on the plate and toast it with a kitchen torche (FUN!), and then put the cocoa-coated mousse (now somewhat thawed) on top of the merigue and serve.

Without a doubt, this was a challenge that definitely required a weekend. While no part was overly difficult, many were time consuming or required extensive cooling time. For example, the mousse had to be frozen for a recommended 6-8 hours. (I made the mousse Saturday afternoon and didn't serve it until Sunday evening.)

This recipe makes A LOT of dessert: two 9x9 pans, to be exact. The meringue didn't last until the next day when we had leftovers, so I tried toasting some homemade marshmallows and using them instead of the meringue. Not so much... the exture was off. Better to use no meringue than the marshmallows.

The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle.

The chocolate marquise with meringue - 1st attempt at plating. No so impressed, but it tasted great!

The chocolate marquise with the toasted marshmallows - better plating this time around.... too bad the marshmallows didn't work very well.