It seems that I cannot get enough of Durians. On my own whims and fancy, I made a Durian Mousse Cake.
This is a rather simple cake to make. As usual, I cut down on the sugar used and let the natural sugar in the Durian to make up for the overall sweetness of the cake. My family is not complaining. The cake is gone by the next day.
For the cake base, I adapted it from Matcha Mousse Cake as I have tried their recipe before and I love the super soft, moist sponge cake texture. I have been looking around for the best recipes for sponge cake base, this is one of my favorites. To make super soft sponge cake, one of the key thing to note is using fresh eggs. Another thing to note is all the ingredients (for sponge cake) should be at room temperature. I have my fair share of failures, with the end product of sponge cake being very dense and heavy due to various reasons. I have learnt from my mistakes and paid a high price for it (by having to finish the entire dense cake that no one else fancy). You can see from the picture that the texture of the sponge cake is very soft and cottony.
The below is for a small 6″ cake. Please increase the portion if you are making a bigger cake.
For the Durian cream, most recipes call for adding in icing sugar, as icing sugar contains cornstarch that act to stabilize the whipped cream. But I skipped the icing sugar here, preferring to use gelatin method instead because icing sugar is sugar (which I am trying to avoid).
Durian Mousse Cake (6″ cake tin)
(Preparation time: 45 mins. For 2 – 3 pax.)
Ingredients
4 medium eggs (or 5 small eggs)
40 grams castor sugar
25 grams vegetable oil
60 grams milk
60 grams cake flour
1/8 tsp cream of tarter
1/2 cup whip topping
1/2 tsp gelatin and 1 1/2 tsp water
160 gram durian meat
Method:
Preparing the Sponge Cake:
- Pre-heat oven at 180 oC.
- Use grease proof paper to line the bottom of cake tin.
- Shift the flour twice. Set aside.
- Separate the egg yokes from the egg whites.
- For the egg yokes, add in some of the sugar, lightly beat with a fork.
- Slowly pour the oil to the egg yokes, mixed well. Next slowly pour the milk to the egg yokes mixture and mixed well. Sift in the flour to mixture and mixed well with a spatula until no more flour grains can be seen.
- In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with cream of tartar. Once the egg whites becomes foamy and a bit stiff, slowly add in the sugar in batches and continue beating the egg whites. Beat until the egg whites expand 2 – 3 times, and soft peaks are form.
- Using the spatula, take one scoop of egg whites and fold into the egg yokes mixture. Mix well. (If you pour the egg yokes mixture directly into the egg whites mixture, it will deflate your egg whites mixture.)
- Then slowly pour the egg yokes mixture back to the egg whites mixture and fold using spatula until well combined.
- Bake for 25 mins. Use a toothpick and prick into the cake, if the toothpick comes out clean, means the cake is ready. (Please note for different ovens, the temperature can vary slightly and the time to bake may also vary slightly.)
- Let the cake cool down completely. Then slice horizontally into half.
Preparing the Durian Cream:
- Next prepare the durian cream. Using a double boiler concept, in a bowl with the whip topping, put this bowl on top of another bigger bowl filled with ice cool water (this is to keep the cream cold and easier to whip). Using the beater to beat cream until soft peaks are form.
- Prepare the gelatin. Sprinkle the gelatin on top of the water. Then immerse the bowl containing gelatin water on top of another bigger bowl containing hot water. The gelatin will melt very fast. Take out of hot water once melted.
- In the bowl containing whipped cream, add in the durian meat and melted gelatin liquid. Use beater to beat and combined. Chilled the mixture in the freezer compartment for at least 30 mins.
Beating the whip topping till soft peaks.
Add in gelatin and durian meat, beat to combine.
Assembling the cake:
- With half the sponge cake, spread the durian cream on top of the sponge. Next place the 2nd layer of the sponge cake on top of the durian cream, using the durian cream, cover the top and the sides of the sponge cake.
- Freeze for at least 4 hours before serving.
