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in possibly my best effort in plated dessert design to date, I give my faithful readers this fucking thing.  Hopefully, the plate exudes a clean elegance, peppered with a touch of how’ did he do that? Well, I’ll tell you.  The sponge cake base is a classic Devil’s Food cake recipe that I found in one of my new favorite cookbooks, Dessert Fourplay by Johnny Iuzzini. The recipe calls for mayonnaise, which tickles me, and keeps the cake super-moist.  The science of that is kind of obvious: cake batters have eggs and oil, mayo is eggs and oil emulsified.  On top of the sponge cake I pipe a chocolate icing that I found the recipe for on the best food site ever, IDEAS IN FOOD. The icing calls for sweetened condensed milk (like the dulche,) and balsamic vinegar to blend with dark chocolate.  The sticky icing has a nice subtle acid note, a quiet personality.  On top of the icing is a thin piece of tempered chocolate, a nice thin snappy-crunch.  I’ve seen garnish this used a lot; especially in Parisian pastry shops.   With the help of my ChocoBot, some marble slabs, and some precise cuts, this process proved to be quite easy.  Just like Salted Caramel Sauce, easy peasy-smack-a-jeezy.  Really, the only semi-difficult element to this dish is the dulce de leche mousse.  The recipe it self is no brain-tease; just a spin on a white chocolate mousse.  In fact, I was originally going to use caramelized white chocolate, but decided the laborious process wasn’t worth the taste.  It tastes like dulce, so why not just use dulce?  Making dulce de leche is not hard, just kinda weird.  Take a few cans of sweetened condensed milk, place them in a large pot (yes in the can.)  Fill the pot with water, be sure to cover the cans by a few inches.  Bring the water to a boil, and keep boiling for 3 to 4 hours.  Keep a bucket of water nearby to refill the water as it evaporates.  After 4 hours, kill the heat and dump out the water.  Cover the cans with ice to cool them off.  When cooled, open the cans and enjoy the dulceness.  I know this sounds strange, but it’s way easier than the traditional method. So here’s the hard part, molding the cylinders.  Not really hard I guess, just time consuming.  I’ve seen Michael Laiskonis of Le Bernardin make cool cylnders on his blog,  and always wanted to try it.  After a month of experimenting, I have a process.  There’s got to be a better way, but here’s how I do it.  Take your cannoli forms and line one side of each mold with tin foil. Stand them upright in a six pan or secured with a rubber band on a sheet tray. Line each mold with acetate, the thin clear plastic stuff.  When the mousse is ready, pipe it into the molds.  Freeze them shits rock hard, at least 3 hours, better to do it overnight.  \Demold the mousse and plate while frozen, and thaw in the fridge on the plates. Serve with desired components.  Or wrap them shits.

Dulce De Leche Mousse

4 1/2 sheets of gelatin.

1 1/4 cups heavy cream

1 lb 5 oz Dulce de Leche

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1.  Bloom the gelatin in cold water.

2.  Weigh the dulce de leche into a bowl.  Bring the first measurement of cream to a boil, and then pour it over the ducle.  Drain and add the gelatin.  Whisk to combine.  Or use an immersion blender.

3.  Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature.  Meanwhile, whip the second measurement of cream to soft peaks.

4.  Fold in the cream gently.  Pipe into desired molds, or just into a martini glass.  Chill until set and enjoy.