The enchanted forest
Francesca Piazza
It is a dish dessert that took shape one evening in May, after a few hours of study, bored by the thousand notions of pharmacology absorbed in the afternoon.
It was not born by chance, it was born with the thought of a special friend who is celebrating her birthday these days.
Thinking of her, a fairy tale came to mind, a world suspended halfway between reality and enchantment. So I took a pen and paper and made a draft, a drawing. Trying to fix that precise image and transform it into a set of flavors, colors and textures.
I hope that, with my recipe, you too can take a walk in my imagination by stopping for a few moments in the undergrowth, sitting on a chocolate trunk, next to a couple of mushrooms and listening to the sounds of the earth.
Preparation time: 2 hours
Degree of difficulty (1 to 5): 3
Ingredients for 4 servings:
For the chocolate log and the twigs:
100 g of 72% dark chocolate (50-55% is fine too)
Bitter cocoa
1 rectangle of baking paper (10cm * 5cm)
1 metal cylinder, or the handle of a wooden spoon
Kitchen brush
For the strawberry mousse:
200 g of strawberries
15 g of sugar (depends on the sweetness of the fruit)
100 ml cream
2 g of gelatin sheets
For the mushrooms:
90 + 10 g of white chocolate
7 g of cocoa butter
2 g of fat-soluble red dye
A sheet of acetate
Different size pastry rings (diameter = 3cm, 2cm, 1cm)
150 g of fresh cream
1 teaspoon of Matcha green tea
1 tablespoon of powdered sugar
½ grated tonka bean
For the cocoa crumble:
55 g of soft butter
40 g of cane sugar
30 g of 00 flour
15 g of bitter cocoa powder
40 g of almond flour
1 g salt
For the Matcha tea crumble
50 g of soft butter
40 g of almond flour
30 g of 00 flour
8 g of matcha green tea
55 g of granulated sugar
1 g salt
Procedure:
The log
Temper the dark chocolate. To do this, melt 60 g in the microwave, being careful not to use too high a power and bring the mass to 45-50 ° C.
With a knife, reduce the remaining 40 g into fine pieces (the finer they are, the more simply they will melt) and add them to the hot mass. Wait a few moments then mix the two chocolates so that the second addition melts as well.
In this way the flux temperature should have dropped (around 27 ° C), if you are still at too high a value no problem: wait a few moments, taking care to stir frequently. When the chocolate reaches 27 ° C, heat it for a few seconds (very little, about 5-10 seconds are enough) in the microwave in order to raise the temperature to 31-32 ° C.
Now prepare next to you, on the table, the food film and the cylinder. Take the paper oven, crumple it in your hands to give it a wrinkled effect, then return to open the sheet and place it on the table (well dried and clean). With the help of an elbow spatula spread a layer of chocolate on the rectangle of cartaforno (it must be about 1-2 mm), then wait for it to partially crystallize. When the surface becomes "dull and dry" (it should not get your fingers dirty if touched) but still soft and workable, wrap the rectangle around the cylinder and fix it by wrapping food film around it.
Place in the refrigerator to crystallize (about 20 minutes).
Then remove the cylinder, remove the foil and gently remove the baking paper from the chocolate.
Sprinkle the surface of the trunk with cocoa to obtain the "soil" effect.
For the twigs:
With the leftover tempered chocolate, fill a cornet of cartaforno and cut the end to obtain a fine tip; prepare a bowl full of cocoa and sprinkle some chocolate threads with the croissant into the powder. Store in the refrigerator to crystallize.
For the strawberry mousse:
Put the gelatin sheet to hydrate in cold water.
Clean the strawberries and cut them into cubes; then place them in a saucepan with the sugar and turn on a medium heat. Bring the fruit to a boil, cook for 3-4 minutes, then remove it from the oven and add the gelatin.
Puree the mixture with an immersion blender in order to obtain a homogeneous puree; let it cool down, waiting for it to reach room temperature.
Add the cream, pour the mixture into a siphon * and load the instrument with a can of NO2.
Put the siphon in the refrigerator for an hour so that it cools down carefully; then remove the instrument, turn it over and shake it vigorously. Take the chocolate trunk and fill it with the foam by sprinkling from both openings of the cylinder.
* if you do not have a siphon, you can whip 200 ml of cream separately and AFTER add 100 ml of strawberry puree to this. By changing the proportions and the technique you will still obtain a soft "mousse" that you can sprinkle into the trunk with the help of a sa à poche and a smooth nozzle.
Mushroom hat:
Melt the white chocolate in the microwave using medium power (It must reach 40-45 °
be careful not to burn it!). Melt the cocoa butter all the same and add the red coloring in it; mix carefully so as not to leave lumps inside the mixture.
Add the colored cocoa butter to 90g white chocolate and temper this following the same instructions for the dark chocolate, but be careful to use it at 28-29 ° C instead of 32 ° C.
With the help of an elbow spatula spread a thin layer of chocolate on an acetate sheet, then wait for it to semi-crystallize becoming dry to the touch.
At that point, make some discs with the help of the pastry rings and place the sheet in the refrigerator. Wait about ten minutes, then remove the red discs.
Melt the 10 g of remaining white chocolate, fill a paper oven cornet and use it to obtain the "dots" on the mushroom cap (represented by the red discs).
For the mushroom base:
Place the fresh cream in a bowl with the matcha tea, the grated half fava bean and the icing sugar, then whip with an electric mixer.
For the chocolate crumble
In a bowl, combine the brown sugar, salt, almond flour, 00 flour and bitter cocoa. Mix the powders to obtain a homogeneous whole then add the soft butter.
Place the dough on a sheet of parchment paper and bake at 160 ° C for about 10-15 minutes. Once extracted from the oven, as we do not want too large granules, chop with a knife until you reach the desired size.
Let it cool down.
For the matcha green tea crumble
In a bowl, mix the powders carefully then, as before, add the softened butter and mix everything. Pour the dough, which will appear grainy, on a size lined with parchment then bake at 160 ° C for about 10-15 minutes.
Assembling the cake
In a serving dish, preferably rectangular, create an irregular base with the cocoa crumble and the green tea crumble. Organize the base trying to give a "soil and grass" effect as in the photo.
On the side, arrange the log stuffed with strawberry foam using the green tea crumble to reproduce the musk. With a pastry bag and a smooth nozzle sprinkle 4-5 spikes of tea chantilly on the crumble and lay the previously created chocolate discs on top.
With the help of a pair of tweezers, extract the twigs from the cocoa powder, then place them on the plate to recreate the twigs.
