Though I am not spontaneously drawn to this kind of light-textured, mousse-like chocolate cakes — given a choice I will opt for the dense and fudgy cake every time — sometimes the occasion calls for a cake just like this.
A couple of months ago, I was contacted by a girl named Camille, a senior student at the Camondo school of design and architecture in Paris. She was working on her graduation project, for which she had designed a new kind of lunch box for three, to be bought and shared, picnic-style, with your friends or coworkers. She had the box all designed, with nifty ideas and a clever stacking of containers, but the point was, after all, to serve food. And this is where she requested my help : could I create six chromatic menus to fill the containers — green, yellow, pink, orange, white and black, in pure Pink Buffet style?
The cake is fluffy and moist, and the ganache glaze — well, what can you expect from a ganache glaze but sheer sublimity?
I was charmed by the idea, and felt an instant connection to the delightfully sweet and friendly Camille (also, Camille happens to be my middle name). I eagerly agreed to help, and got to work. The challenge was to create a set of menus that made culinary sense, while following the color rule (I added a “no artificial coloring” rule) and also factoring in the box’s structure : it contained a fixed number of containers of different shapes, all linked together, that were to be unfolded and unstacked, from top to bottom, as the meal progressed.
Over the course of the last two months, in preparation for the grand jury, Camille and I worked on making these menus real, so she could take pictures for her project presentation : some dishes she made on her own from recipes I provided, some items were store-bought to save time, some dishes we made together. And among the latter (are you getting the where-in-the-world-is-she-going-with-this syndrome yet? come on, be honest) was this chocolate cake you see here, to be included as the dessert in the black menu.
I wanted a chocolate cake that would rise high enough to fill the cubic dessert containers prettily, and I wanted to glaze the servings with a dark chocolate ganache, to make them black and shiny. This recipe fit the bill perfectly, and was absolutely scrumptious : the cake part is fluffy and moist, and the ganache glaze — well, what can you expect from a ganache glaze but sheer sublimity?
Incidently, this is what Camille chose to serve the jury members, to illustrate her point. Point well illustrated apparently, as the results just came out, and I am most proud and happy to annouce that she graduated, and with honors, no less. Toutes mes félicitations Camille!
