Queen Charlotte, previously Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz is an interesting figure for several reasons. She was an amateur botanist, a mother of 15, a great patron of the arts (especially music) and a strong advocate for women’s education. Yet it’s her supposed African ancestry that’s garnered the most attention lately. In 2007 (?), a historian and […]
READ ONThat’s hard to say. A Charlotte, as you may recall from my previous Charlotte project, is a sort of…well it’s a kind of a…hm. A Charlotte isn’t really a pastry since it’s not composed of layers. It’s not a cake, either. I mean, what cake there is in a Charlotte is used to cover the outside. I supposed that makes it a “molded dessert” technically, part of the trifle and pudding family.
That being the case, you won’t be surprised to learn the Charlotte originated in Britain, probably in the late 1700’s. It is named, or so it’s thought, for Queen Charlotte, the wife of the never-popular-in-Amerca King George III. In those days a Charlotte was a baked item, filled with apple compote and topped with bread crumbs. It wasn’t until the legendary French chef Antonin Carême got hold of it that it became the no-bake cream-filled apparatus that it is today.
READ ONThis is rich for a fruit mousse, but then you only live once.
2-3 ripe 1-pound mangoes
3 ounces (1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons) sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3 1/2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
2 cups whipping cream
Peel the mangoes and scoop the flesh away from the seeds. You want about 20 ounces of fruit. Purée the flesh and the sugar in a food processor until smooth. Strain the mixture through a sieve.
READ ONIn coming up with this recipe I borrowed liberally from Bruce Healy and Paul Bugat’s The Art of the Cake. I liked the details they added (especially the finishing sauce) which I’m sure will produce a superior Charlotte. Or at least I’m pretty sure…so don’t try this until I’ve done it, K?
For the jelly roll:
1/2 recipe joconde
2-3 ounces heavy syrup
1 1/2 cups orange marmalade, melted and strained
This week’s request comes straight from the top: my mother, Mrs. Joe Pastry Senior (I was named after my father, which technically makes me a “junior”). She was pouring over some old recipes last month, and unearthed one she’d clipped from a old issue of Bon Appétit magazine, it was for something called “European Mousse […]
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This cake is so scandalous I can’t even write a headline about it that doesn’t seem obscene. “Preparing Rigo Jancsi”? Not much better. Guess I just have to accept the snickers from the back of the bus and move on.
A good piece of Rigó Jancsi — there I did it again — is essentially a cube, about two inches on a side. It’s all you need since this really is decadent stuff. It’s chocolate mousse, essentially, between two layers of intensely chocolate-y (to the point of being almost coffee-like) spongecake, topped by a layer of chocolate, almost like a softened bittersweet bar.
READ ONYou may have noticed that posting has been er, nonexistent today. The reason is because I’ve been using my writing time to make the pastry. I’ve discovered that the “authentic”, “reliable” recipe I procured has several problems with it, a couple of which I should have spotted right away but didn’t. So, my apologies to anyone who attempted the recipe this past week and met with mediocre results. I’ll fix the problems and put up a corrected set of instructions as soon as possible.
UPDATE: We’re all set now, I believe.
READ ONThe exploits of Jancsi and Clara are very poorly documented. Most of what’s written in regard to their years together is culled from gossip columns. They were married for seven years, during which passions ran high in all senses. They loved loudly and fought loudly all around Europe and the Mediterranean. By some accounts they […]
READ ONReader Jimma writes:
I’m from Michigan, live in Belgium, and hang out with Hungarians. I think I am destined to try making this cake.
That is, if I can find the chocolate. You might laugh, considering how famous Belgian chocolate is, but baking chocolate does not exist here — the closest thing I can find is some rather expensive unsweetened chocolate that, while technically the same thing as baking chocolate, costs quite a lot more than what I cooked with in the States. I’ve been told that I can substitute cocoa powder mixed with butter or some other fat, or use bittersweet chocolate and cut the added sugar in the recipe, but haven’t tried either so far.
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