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Description
This is the cake I made myself for my birthday. It's been ages since I've played with joconde. [If you don't know what a joconde imprime is, it's basically a very thin layer of sponge that encases a dessert]. This time I wanted to make it less of a uniform pattern and more of a canvas for something arty. I decided to go with something pretty but also animal themed, because of my obvious love of animals.

Choosing what to put inside the cake is always the hardest. Often these cakes will be filled with mousse, but I figured I was probably the only one that would be happy to eat an entire cake made out of chocolate mousse. Instead I had to come up with other layers to pretend like it wasn't just an excuse to eat loads of mousse.

So. On the bottom there's a layer of chocolate genoise sponge, op top of that there's dark chocolate mousse, and another layer of sponge. To add a textural element I made a chocolate hazelnut crunch layer. It's basically a hazelnut ganache with pailleté feuilletine folded through -- think crunchy gourmet nutella. For the last layer I went with a fresh raspberry mousse to try to contrast all that rich sweetness. To decorate, I covered it with dark chocolate ganache. I piped on a bit of white chocolate, then adorned with fresh raspberries, lavender macarons and little chocolate blossoms shapes.

So basically it was one giant excuse to fill a cake with a bunch of my favourite things. And I loved every bite of it.

If you want to make this yourself, or just see and read about the process, you'll find that all at my blog .

Here's some other joconde imprimes:

Description
This is the cake I made myself for my birthday. It's been ages since I've played with joconde. [If you don't know what a joconde imprime is, it's basically a very thin layer of sponge that encases a dessert]. This time I wanted to make it less of a uniform pattern and more of a canvas for something arty. I decided to go with something pretty but also animal themed, because of my obvious love of animals.

Choosing what to put inside the cake is always the hardest. Often these cakes will be filled with mousse, but I figured I was probably the only one that would be happy to eat an entire cake made out of chocolate mousse. Instead I had to come up with other layers to pretend like it wasn't just an excuse to eat loads of mousse.

So. On the bottom there's a layer of chocolate genoise sponge, op top of that there's dark chocolate mousse, and another layer of sponge. To add a textural element I made a chocolate hazelnut crunch layer. It's basically a hazelnut ganache with pailleté feuilletine folded through -- think crunchy gourmet nutella. For the last layer I went with a fresh raspberry mousse to try to contrast all that rich sweetness. To decorate, I covered it with dark chocolate ganache. I piped on a bit of white chocolate, then adorned with fresh raspberries, lavender macarons and little chocolate blossoms shapes.

So basically it was one giant excuse to fill a cake with a bunch of my favourite things. And I loved every bite of it.

If you want to make this yourself, or just see and read about the process, you'll find that all at my blog .

Here's some other joconde imprimes: