I cannot tell you how much I admire French pâtisserie and how much I am inspired by the incredible art of French pâtisserie. I cannot think of any French pastry that I do not like. One of my favorite pastries are financiers, brioches, canelés, éclairs, tartlettes au citron and in particularly I love the art of French fancy little cakes. Over the last three years I became very passionate about learning the art of making little cakes and it is one of my favorite things to do and reading books about French pâtisserie as well. At the moment I am reading a very heavy and thick pâtisserie book by Pierre Hermé: it is a book that makes me a bit dizzy because there are so many pastry terms that I have to look up in order to understand Hermé's recipes.
It is a lot of joy for me spending hours in the kitchen while listening to an interesting radio program or podcast and creating these little cakes. It is a very rewarding process which results into beautiful homemade little cakes that do not look only fancy but taste really, really scrumptious. I know that I have not shared many recipes of cakes that takes more time and effort than making cookies or a simple pound cake for example. I was very hesitant about sharing recipes because I am not a patissiére and I was not sure if anyone was interested in making fancy little French cakes (I still do not know if anyone cares about it). However, I want to document my little pâtisserie journey for myself and maybe I can inspire one or two which would make me very happy.
Today I want to share a recipe of raspberry mousse cakes that are filled with a white chocolate cream and a raspberry jelly core and have a chocolate walnut brownie bottom. I made these raspberry mousse cakes several times this year and everyone who tried these cakes loved them very much and were very impressed. 
You might think to yourself that there is no way that you have the time for making those time-consuming cakes, in particular during the holidays season. Quite the contrary, I think it is a beautiful cake for the upcoming holiday season and it is the perfect dessert for a fancy holiday dinner.
I cannot deny that it takes more time than making chocolate chip cookies but you do not have to make the cakes in one day. For example you can prepare the core of the cake on one evening and you can prepare the raspberry mousse and brownie dough the following evening. One need to freeze the cakes at least 4 hours but you can also freeze the cakes for a week. Just the finishing touches has to be done one hour before you serve these delicious raspberry mousse cakes.
NOTE: I always use frozen raspberries - I defrost them at room temperature - for these mousse cakes.
It is important to use precise measurements of the ingredients, otherwise you might experience a bad surprise.I tried my best to write down this recipe but if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to ask me.

Makes 6 raspberry mousse cakes

Equipment

  • Six small silicon moulds (4 cm Ø )
  • Six hemisphere silicon moulds (6 cm Ø )
  • Sugar thermometer
  • A good kitchen scale

White Chocolate Cream

  • 2 g powdered gelatin
  • 55 ml heavy cream
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 5 g granulated sugar
  • 15 g white chocolate (roughly chopped)
  • Mix gelatin with 1 tablespoon of cold water in a small pot. Let it stand for 10 minutes.
  • Boil up the heavy cream. In the meantime mix the egg yolk and sugar in a bowl. Pour the hot heavy cream to the egg mixture and mix. Then pour the mixture back into the pot. Over medium heat stir mixture constantly until the temperature has reached 85 °C and the mixture is thickened. Remove from the heat and pour the mixture into a bowl.
  • Heat the gelatin gently and pour it over the mixture and stir well. Add the white chocolate and let it stand for 1 minute; then stir until the cream is smooth. Pour the white chocolate cream into silicon moulds (half -full). Freeze the chocolate cream for at least 2 hours.

Raspberry Jelly

  • 85 g raspberries (fresh or frozen/thawed)
  • 15 g granulated sugar
  • 2 powdered gelatin
  • Mix gelatin with 1 tablespoon of cold water in a small pot. Let it stand for 10 minutes.
  • Puree raspberries. Strain the puree through a fine mesh strainer in order to remove the seeds (you can also omit this step if you do not mind raspberry seeds in your cake but I recommend removing the seeds).
  • Heat the raspberry puree and sugar. Remove pot from the heat. Heat the gelatin gently. Stir gelatin into the raspberry puree.
  • Take the moulds with the chocolate cream out from the freezer and pour the raspberry mixture over the chocolate cream. Freeze the moulds again for at least 2 hours.

Raspberry Mousse

  • 100 g raspberries (fresh or frozen/thawed)
  • 3 g powdered gelatin
  • 5 ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 25 g granulated sugar
  • 135 ml heavy cream
  • Mix gelatin with 2 tablespoons of cold water in a small pot. Let it stand for 10 minutes.
  • Puree the raspberries. Strain the puree through a fine mesh strainer in order to remove the seeds. Pour the pureed raspberries into a big bowl.
  • Heat the gelatin gently and add gelatin and lemon juice to the raspberry puree. Mix well.
  • In a double boiler heat egg yolk and sugar until the temperature reached 60 °C. While heating the mixture, constantly stir. Pour egg mixture into a bowl and beat the mixture until it is cold and thickened.
  • Whisk heavy cream until creamy.
  • Fold in the egg mixture to the raspberry mouse. Then fold in the whipped cream to the mousse.

Brownie Bottom

  • 50 g dark chocolate (70%) (roughly chopped)
  • 75 g unsalted butter
  • 75 g granulated sugar
  • 1 egg (medium size)
  • 35 g all-purpose flour
  • 65 g walnuts (toasted and roughly chopped)
  • Preheat the oven to 170 °C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  • Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler.
  • Mix sugar and egg in a bowl. Add the melted butter-chocolate mixture. Mix flour and walnuts and stir it into the batter.
  • Pour the batter onto the baking sheet (use half of the baking sheet or use a casserole dish).
  • Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

Decoration

  • 1 pouch of unflavoured gelatin fruit glaze
  • Raspberry or blackberry juice (for the unflavoured gelatin)
  • 6 fresh raspberries
  • White chocolate

Assembling

  • Fill the raspberry mousse into hemisphere moulds.
  • Unmould the frozen white chocolate and raspberry jelly core. Gently press the frozen cores into the moulds.
  • Use a round cookie cutter or a glass and cut out 6 cm Ø round brownie slices.
  • Put the brownie slices on top of the mousse.
  • Freeze the cakes for at least 4 hours.
  • Prepare the gelatin fruit glaze according package instruction.
  • Unmould the cakes and put the frozen cakes on a wire rack. Pour the glaze over frozen the cakes. It is important that the cakes are still frozen while pouring the glace over the cakes.
  • Decorate each cake with a raspberry and white chocolate.
  • Place each cake on a plate and let the raspberry mousse cakes defrost for about one hour.

The recipe is adapted from the book "Törtchen & Tartlettes" by Matthias Ludwigs.