92/99: Miette's Tomboy

This is cake 2 in the weekend marathon! My original plan was to stay up tonight and do 4 but I think it might just be a Saturday marathon with 7 cakes. I'll need all the sleep I can get tonight...

I've been looking forward to Miette's Tomboy for quite awhile because apparently it's one of the best in the book. The recipe is really strange though and did not seem like typical Rose.



First you start off by pouring boiling water on top of 70% chocolate. This is strange because for every other cake I've done like this, I've poured the boiling water over cocoa powder. Plus the fact that it's 70% and not the normal 60-62% chocolate that every other recipe calls for.  Just so you know, I bought a little under 2 pounds of the 60% chocolate today to cover me for the next seven cakes...it's going to be a long weekend haha.

The next step was strange too: make a meringue and then pour oil, milk and the watery-chocolate mixture into it. I looked at it and thought for sure I did something wrong.

But then it all turns out normal when you add a ton of dry ingredients-flour, sugar, etc.

Next is icing time! For some reason, Rose seemed to be freaking out over the temperature of the icing and how you have to measure it at each stage and yada yada ya...  I can't find my instant read thermometer so I decided to live on the edge and do it without.

So first: caramel. my favorite thing ever. It actually turned out just fine even without a thermometer.  Then you whip up the egg whites and finally pour the hot caramel into the meringue in order to stabilize it.

Next is the whipped butter mixture:

Then you combine the two:

And voila! Mousseline! I decided to add some seedless raspberry jam to mine to give it an extra kick (a variation suggestion in the book).  It actually turned out quite nicely and was really pretty as a result. Of course I did add a bit of food coloring to make the color more vibrant.

I tried the cake after it had been in the refrigerator for awhile and i think it needed to be at room tempurature.  It was good but not exceptional as I was expecting.  It almost had a brownie like consistency.  I'm going to try it again tomorrow at room temperature and see if it's better then!