Daring Bakers' April 2011 Challenge - Maple Mousse in Tuile Basket with Sugar Cage

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

Yay - Sugar cage :-)

The recipe for the maple mousse and some suggestions for edible containers can be found here.

While I personally was intrigued by the idea of combining the maple mousse with bacon I quickly realised that I would not find many willing guinea pigs to help me eat this dessert. So I decided to stick to something more traditional and made tuile baskets. Tuiles were on my to-bake-list for a while now so I was happy to finally have a reason to try them out. I used this recipe and was surprised at how quick and easy it was. Ok, my tuiles were not browned evenly, but I blame this on my oven (yes, I do this a lot) and my impatience when trying to spread the dough on the sheet. But I still got some nice baskets to serve the mousse in.

The maple mousse itself had a great taste and everybody loved it. I used 4 sheets of gelatine (could not find powdered gelatine) but would reduce this to 3 sheets the next time. The mousse was fine and had the ideal consistency to spoon it into the tuile baskets and take nice pictures, but to eat it prefer a softer texture.

To decorate the mousse I tried my hands at a caramel cage. It actually worked better than I imagined. I actually managed to produce a little cage that did not break when plating the mousse... Also, the little sugar web underneath the tuile adds a nice contrast to the white plate (although, when looking at the finished plate, I realized, that I could have achieved the same effect with a maple sirup design, ah well...). All in all I again enjoyed this challenge. Now go check out the amazing creations of the other Daring Bakers and vote for your favourite edible container on The Daring Kitchen.