Wow. That was daring. And challenging...

...but the end result was very impressive. I pretty much followed the original recipe except that I made the mouse with milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate, and I was glad that I did! With the very dark chocolate glaze and the very dark chocolate layer, the milk chocolate was a nice change. The general consensus was that the praline layer was the best, and the frozen crème brulee layer was a very close second.



This took a lot of time over about three days to make. My mom and brother assisted the making over Christmas, they both love to bake so it was a fun activity for us. I waited till then since I knew I would need space to make it and people to eat it. Mom's kitchen is about 4 times the size of mine.




The only snafu we ran into was in making the praline paste to go into the praline layer. The first batch of sugar ended up black, burnt and in the trash. All was well after that...well, well enough. The crepe for the praline did not cook evenly, but once crushed into bits and coated in chocolate, you could not tell. I think my mousse was a little thick, but it made it easier to spread into the pan.




The only other change I made was in the assembly of the cake. I put the entire cake together at once and put it in the freezer fully assembled upside down in a loaf pan, and it worked just fine. I glazed it the next day and we had a wonderful dessert.




My cake could have been prettier, but it could not have really tasted any better. I enjoyed the whole process but I'm not sure what would inspire me to do this again. I think that if I did want to do it, I would skip the most time consuming part...the praline layer...and use kit kats lined up for that layer instead. I think it tasted very similar to a kit kat and they would be a perfect fill in when you just don't have time for praline paste, crepes, melting chocolate and cooling. . . I was only sad that I had to leave the leftovers at home in my Mom's freezer...oh yea, and my mom said to mention that she's never buying unshelled hazelnuts again!



Can't wait for the next daring challenge!!