Frozen White Chocolate Mousse Cake

Gretchen (wolf@austin.ibm.com)

Ok, here's one of my favorite dessert recipes in the entire world.
Very easy to make and INCREDIBLY delicious... people keep telling me I
should sell these. (Just to be clear, T.= Tablespoon and t.= teaspoon)


Frozen White Chocolate Mousse Cake
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chocolate Crumb Crust:
1 9oz. pkg. chocolate wafers, finely crushed
6 T. butter (or margarine), melted

Preheat oven to 325.  Butter a 9" springform pan.  Mix crumbs and
butter; press evenly into bottom and partway up sides of pan.  Bake
for 6 minutes.  Cool.

Mousse:
1/2 whipping cream
9 oz. white chocolate, chopped
2 T. creme de cacao
1 t. vanilla
1/2 C sugar
1/4 C water
4 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 1/2 C whipping cream

- Bring 1/2 C whipping cream just to a boil over med-high heat.
Reduce temp. to low and add white chocolate.  Stir until smooth.  Pour
chocolate/cream mixture into a large bowl and add creme de cacao and
vanilla. Cool completely.

- Bring sugar and 1/4 C water to boil over medium heat, stirring until
sugar  dissolves.  Boil til reaches 238 degrees (about 5 minutes).

- While sugar/water is heating, beat egg whites until they reach soft
peaks.

- GRADUALLY, and in a thin stream, add boiling syrup to egg whites,
beating until they reach stiff peaks.  Cool.

- Fold white chocolate mixtures into egg whites in 2 parts.

- Beat 1 1/2 C whipping cream to soft peaks.  Gently fold into
chocolate mixture.

- Pour into crust and freeze at least 5 hours.


Serving suggestions:  Top with fresh fruit (raspberries,
strawberries).

How I serve it: I take a pkg each of frozen strawberries and frozen
raspberries, blend them in a blender (adding a bit of powdered sugar
to sweeten), then add 1-2 T. of Grand Marnier.  I strain this mixture
to remove seeds.  I swirl this on the serving plate, put a slice of
the cake on top, and top with shaven chocolate (milk, dark, and
white).

I first served this (with the raspberry/strawbery sauce) on
Valentine's Day a few years ago... it was a HUGE hit!


Ken Shirriff's note:
I made 2/3 of this with bittersweet chocolate and 1/3 with white chocolate
and made layers.  Unfortunately, this uses a lot of bowls :-)