Spring Chocolate Mousse Mini Cakes

with the glorious help of Chef Ani:


Chef Ani made working on the Joconde sponge a pure satisfaction. She worked very passionately stencilling the shells in the following steps:

1. Prepare the Ribbon Sponge
2. Divide in batches.
3. Colour each batch.
4. Stencil.
5. Refrigerate.
7. Prepare the Joconde sponge, spread, bake and cut, following the instructions in Flower Power post.




There are few early flowers in the garden. There are much more on the table. I can not wait to see my garden in full bloom. 

The chocolate mini cakes are decorated in different colours and represent different flowers. All of them - great favourites of mine. 



Which else to start with, but with the Queen of all flowers - the rose....

My childhood memories are always full of colours. Most favourite are the ones I built in the meadow, braiding head wreaths out of wild flowers. I close my eyes and I feel the sun rays, kissing the flowers around, I sense the aroma of the warmed, fragile grass, I am sitting in..., I am a child again. Wild - flower head wreaths are so innocent!

Violets!... beautiful, gentle, scented flowers. This mini-cake is Chef Ani's favourite - first of all it is  violet - chef Ani's favourite colour, but most of all - it is the only one mini cake from the collection, filled only with chocolate mouse, without any other distractions like whipped cream and strawberries.  

The flower, that is considered these days a weed - the one, I chased happily as a kid and waited  impatiently for it to grow through all of its stages, so to make a wish and blow all of its seed on the wind. The one flower that is a wish-o-metre (after the daisy "loves-me-loves-me-not" leaves count), now banned from the lawns, is well presented on our table.

for the chocolate mouse filling:

150 ml heavy cream
30 g sugar
200 g dark chocolate - 75% cacao
150 ml heavy cream whipped


1. Have the chocolate chopped in a heat proof bowl.
2. Bring the heavy cream and sugar to a boil. Pour over the chocolate.
3. Stir until the ganache is glossy and smooth. Let it stay at room temperature.
4. When the ganache cools down to room temperature, fold in the whipped chilled cream.
5. Pipe the ganache in the mini-cakes.
6. Optional: Pipe whipped cream and decorate with fresh strawberries.





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