Almond Stripes

Well as you can see I don’t have piped cookies…

I will be curious to see how others faired on this one.  I did have a soft dough and tried to pipe with a star tip but it just was too thick…too thick and dry to even use the bag without the tip.  That is when plan b came into motion haha.  I ended up rolling balls and cooking for 15 min.  I had intended to dip the piped cookies with chocolate as the option we were given, so instead I gave the cookies their stripes with chocolate ganache.

Interestingly as I was waiting for the last batch to come out, I tried a chocolate one and thought the chocolate overpowered the cookie.  I left the last dozen unstriped…the almond and cinnamon flavor came through much stronger.  We thought these tasted similar to a snickerdoodle.

Since it was a nice rainy day when I was baking, I went ahead and did the Dark Chocolate Mousse the same day.  My tasters thought the two went perfectly together…like they were meant to be served together.  🙂

Dark Chocolate Mousse

 

We are told this is “everything a mousse should be: creamy, full flavor and rich, without seeming heavy…impossible to resist”.  It did not disappoint.

This is a technical bake, a pro’s recipe we are told and I am reminded how far a lot of us home bakers have come since starting this adventure.  I have been watching “The Great British Baking Show” on Netflix lately and boy…we have done MANY of the technical bakes they are required to do.  It is really fun to watch and makes me think as we are finishing up our 2nd cookbook, how much of an education we have gotten by just baking away.  You really do learn as you go. It has been so fun!

This mousse has 4 main steps…whip the cream, melt the chocolate, whip the eggs, and make the cooked sugar syrup….paying close attention to the temperature.  The only difficult part is streaming the syrup into the beating eggs.  Somehow I ended up with some of my syrup solidified on the bottom of my bowl…the bowl must have cooled it too rapidly.  It didn’t seem to change my outcome but next time I think I would try to aim more into the eggs and hope they don’t scramble. 🙂

This was loved by all…everyone commented how rich it was, but that they couldn’t stop eating it and finished all that I had sent them.  It really did have a beautiful texture which made you want to just keep eating it.  I had made the Almond Stripes the same day.  My tasters all thought they went brilliantly together…like I planned it! I think the mousse was perfect to combine with some cookie crumbles.  All of it was gone!  I would say they both were a success.