Daring Bakers April Challenge: Maple Mousse and (sweet) edible containers

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!

After being choosen as a finalist for the savoury was the bar set very high for the Daring Bakers Challenge too. But to my despair all my ideas for sweet edible containers were posted into the forum thread before I could realize them - so I had to say goodbye to chocolate and caramel bowls, and I don't wanted to make an ice or sorbet bowl again. 

There were lots of other creative ideas I never would have thought of, so I would like to share my (five) favourites before showing with what I came up finally.

The Flirty Blog - Pancake Vol-au-vents
Audax Artifex - Sour glazed maple syrup petit fours (he did 9! different versions and I love each one of them)
Anasbageri - Maple red flowers (raspberry tuiles)
Catalina bakes - Cookie egg shells
TxFarmer - Coffee jello (in a flower shape)

My idea was making candy bars because I have bookmarked lots of candy bar recipes recently, including making Twix bars and other sweet treats. I remembered some candy bars I liked to eat when staying in Norway. They are called 'Smash!' and consist of salted corn cores covered with chocolate. I liked the idea of creating a similar bar and used cornflakes with a version of my favourite salted caramel sauce as the base - call it a salty cornflake fudge. This was topped with the maple mousse and covered with chocolate. The remaining mousse was piped into some ice cube moulds from IKEA and covered  just with chocolate (what made really nice pralines). Thanks to my dear friend André I could use my new praline set  with a special rack and forks for that (this was a great birthday present indeed).

My brother- and sister-in-law were my guinea pigs this time and they loved those sweet treats. They dind't taste like 'Smash!' but this melting symphony of sweet & salty in your mouth was irresistable. The only downside was the calorie content ...
I had rarely used maple sirup before - the only recipes I did were in combination with walnuts like those muffins (should make them again soon) or donuts. The mousse was fabulous and really easy to make, so I think about making a swiss roll with walnut sponge cake and maple mousse filling. Maybe a maple ice cream with roasted walnuts wouldn't be bad either ;)

Maple Mousse Candy Bars

Salty Cornflake Fudge

(makes 10 small bars)

• 100 g sugar
• 2 tablespoons cold water
• 25 g salted butter
• 40 ml heavy cream
• 75 unsweetened cornflakes, crushed
• salt to taste

In a small pan, melt the sugar and let caramelize until golden brown. Stop the process by adding the cold water in two steps - be careful, the caramel will splatter - and dont forget to stir to avoid lumps. Add the butter and cream and salt, depending on how salty you would like your fudge. Stir until completely dissolved and bring to a boil, then remove from the heat and add the cornflakes. Line a heatproof rectangle-shaped mould (mine was about 15x15 cm) with baking paper and press the warm fudge into the mould until you have an even layer. Let cool. When cooled, cut into bars with a sharp knife.

Maple Mousse
(enough for 20 small bars)

• 1 cup (240 ml/ 8 fluid oz.) pure maple syrup (not maple-flavoured syrup)
• 4 large egg yolks
• 1 package (7g/1 tbsp.) unflavoured gelatine
• 1 1/2 cups (360 ml. g/12 fluid oz) whipping cream (35% fat content)

Bring maple syrup to a boil then remove from heat. In a large bowl, whisk egg yolks and pour a little bit of the maple syrup in while whisking (this is to temper your egg yolks so they don’t curdle).Add warmed egg yolks to hot maple syrup until well mixed. Measure 1/4 cup of whipping cream in a bowl and sprinkle it with the gelatine. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Place the bowl in a microwave for 45 seconds (microwave for 10 seconds at a time and check it in between) or place the bowl in a pan of barely simmering water, stir to ensure the gelatine has completely dissolved. Whisk the gelatine/whipping cream mixture into the maple syrup mixture and set aside.Whisk occasionally for approximately an hour or until the mixture has the consistency of an unbeaten raw egg white.Whip the remaining cream. Stir 1/4 of the whipped cream into the maple syrup mixture. Fold in the remaining cream and refrigerate for at least an hour. When firm, pipe on top of the cornflakes fudge.

Assembly: 

• 200 g semi-sweet chocolate

Put your bars into the freezer for at least 2 to 3 hours. This helps o prevent the mousse from melting when coverd with the warm chocolate and speeds up the 'drying' process for the chocolate. Melt the chocolate in a water bath. Cover the bars completely with the chocolate and let cool on a rack until completely cooled. Keep into an airtight container in your refridgerator.