Gateau Mozart (Pierre Herme)

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Gateau Mozart (Pierre Herme) is a cake for celebration days!

The Gateau Mozart is a Pierre Hermé’s chocolate mousse cake combining chocolate, a subtle cinnamon flavour and cooked apples (in butter!).   This recipe is part of Le Larousse du Chocolat.  The cake consists of three thin and very friable disks of sweet cinnamon shortcrust pastry with layers of chocolate mousse and cooked apples.  The recipe is rather easy, the difficulty is in making the thin circles without breaking them.

In my version, I wanted a cake higher than 4 centimetres, so I doubled the quantity for the mousse and apples (here I am giving the original recipe).  I find that that the dough pastry makes 4 circles rather than 3 (one spare one just in case)!

Serves 6-8.

Sweet shortcrust cinnamon pastry

180 g butter, at room temperature and diced
40 g icing sugar
35 g almond meal
8 g ground cinnamon
2 hard-boiled egg yolks, thinly passed through a sieve
1 cl dark rum
Pinch of salt (except if using salted butter)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder (1/2 sachet)
200 g  flour

  1. In a bowl place the butter and work it with a spatula, add the icing sugar, the almond meal, ground cinnamon, salt, flour, egg yolks, baking powder and rum.  Do not work the dough too much, it is very friable.
  2. Rest for 4 hours cell-wrapped in the fridge.
  3. Roll the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper to 2 mm thick and make 4 disks of 21 cm diameter. Watch out for creases.  Place the disks flat in the fridge for half an hour.  You may want to take only 1/3 of the dough each time and do one disk at the time. I find that 4 disks can be made.
  4. In the meanwhile, preheat the oven at 180ºC.
  5. Bake each disk for 18-20 minutes then cool down on a cooling rack (bake each disk on the baking paper you rolled it on).
Apple chocolate mousse

 

  • 100 g Granny Smith apples – I like to double almost double the quantity of apple.
  • 10 g butter
  • 1 g cinnamon
  • 35 g caster sugar
  • 6 cl cream
  • 2 cl of dark rum
  • 1 small cinnamon stick broken
  • 165 g dark chocolate 70% cocoa
  • 120 g egg white

 

  1. Peel the apples and cut in cubes. Cook in a fry-pan for 3-4 minutes with the butter, 10 g of the sugar and the cinnamon powder.
  2. Add the rum and flambe.
  3. Set aside to cool to room temperature
  4. Bring to the boil the cream with the cinnamon stick, filter.  Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie.  Mix the cinnamon cream and chocolate together to obtain a ganache.
  5. Beat the whites to snow with the remaining 25 g sugar, incorporate 1/3 to the chocolate, then the rest folding gently, add the apples and fold again gently.
Assemblage
  1. Place one disk at the bottom of a 21 cm springform tin, cover with half of the mousse, now, gently add a second disk, cover with the remaining mousse. Place the third disk.
  2. Refrigerate for a minimum of 30-45 minutes.
  3. Run a knife between the wall of the tin and the cake.  Remove the outer circle and base and slide on the serving plate.
  4. You can now decorate the side with broken chocolate curls (or large pieces grated chocolate), you can also decorate the top with a little cocoa powder, cinnamon sticks and sliced apples.