Chocolate Mousse Cakes with Pomegranate Sauce
This recipe works best made in four 2 3/4 inch (7 cm) metal rings 2 inches (5 cm) deep but round pastry cutters can be used. If you don’t have either, carefully line 4 cups of a muffin pan with plastic wrap, allowing the wrap to hang over the edges and then make the mousse cakes in them.
Cut four 1/4-inch (5mm) thick rounds of pound cake the same diameter as the rings or the base of the muffin cup. Place the rings on a plastic lined cookie sheet and place about 1/4 cup (60 ml) of pomegranate syrup in a small bowl. Dip each round of cake into the syrup and place at the bottom of each ring or in the bases of the muffin tins.
Chop the chocolate very finely and place in a bowl. Put this bowl over a pan of water that has been bought to a boil then removed from the heat. Allow the chocolate to melt stirring occasionally.
Whip the cream until soft peaks form then fold in the warm melted chocolate. Spoon the mixture into the prepared rings or tin and smooth the tops. Refrigerate until set, about 4 hours.
To serve - for the rings: using a propane torch or a hairdryer, heat each metal ring and then slip it off the cake. For the muffin pan: carefully ease the cakes out with help of the plastic wrap, and then discard the wrap.
Dust the tops with cocoa and place them on individual dessert plates. Pour a couple of spoonfuls of the syrup around each cake, and garnish with the extra pomegranate seeds.
POMEGRANATE SYRUP:
Elizabeth Schneider has a recipe for making your own grenadine in her book - Vegetables - Amaranth to Zucchini (William Morrow). This is a great idea, as the store bought version no longer contains any pomegranate at all. I’ve adapted her recipe to make a less sweeter syrup
Place the seeds and sugar in a large saucepan. Using a potato masher, mash them together to dissolve the sugar and release the juices from the seeds. Let this sit overnight.
Next day, bring the seeds and the liquid to a boil over medium heat, mashing again to break any remaining whole seeds. When the mixture is boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 1 minute. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve, pressing hard on the pulp to extract all the juice. Cool the strained liquid then refrigerate.
Makes 1/2 cup (125 ml)
Jennifer McLagan
Jennifer McLagan has been called courageous, a contrarian and even a little crazy. Well in these dietarily correct times, she is definitely a provocative iconoclast who challenges us and makes us rethink our relationship to what we eat. And while she creates delicious recipes she believes that food is more than recipes. So equipped with a quirky sense of humour, a taste for the bizarre, and bowerbird tendencies she delves into food’s history, myth and culture adding to the literature of food and cooking. Her books garner prizes everywhere, BONES won the James Beard Best Single Subject Cookbook award, was a winner in the Gourmand World Cookbook Award, and a finalist in the IACP cookbook awards. FAT won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best Cookbook Cover, the Silver Sprout Award, and both the IACP and James Beard Awards for Best Single Subject Cookbook. It was also named Cookbook of the Year 2009 by the Beard Foundation and is short listed for Cuisine Canada awards. But her publisher just wishes they’d sell better.