Petit Gateau : Cafe, Chocolat Caramel, Peanut Butter

Hubby's birthday is just round the corner. What should I bake? I actually thought of baking a simple cake after spending some time and effort in making the wedding cupcakes. Making fanciful cakes with different components can be tiring at times, not just time consuming. But passion, love and interest will triumph eventually.

I've actually been wanting to bake this petit entremet after coming across it at Daily Delicious blog (Mon Entremets, Café panaché). I'm a fan of her blog. She has so many wonderful recipes and the photos are so beautiful and enticing. Coffee, chocolate and peanut butter - I simply love them. Thus when I came across this hard-to-resist dessert, I tell myself that I have to make it even though it is quite time consuming to do it.

Why did I say time consuming? You see, this little piece of cake consists of 5 different components - chocolate sponge, peanut butter mousse, coffee mousse, chocolate ganache and chocolate caramel cream. My mind said, "Do it." but my body resisted. I'm happy that the mind won in the end.

I started off with baking the chocolate sponge cake first using my own recipe here. I used 60% of the recipe to bake in a 7" x 7" x 1.5" square baking pan. This quantity will yield about 8 to 9 5cm x 5cm square shaped cakes. I had only 4 square shaped rings and so I used I put the balance into one ellipse shaped cake ring and two in a glass cup. Next, I worked on the simple syrup to brush on the cake. Daily Delicious recipe called for Creme de Cacao and since I do not have this, I replaced it with Khalua liqueur. The next day, which was my hubby's birthday, I started working on the peanut butter mousse, coffee mousse and chocolate caramel mousse. I omitted the thin chocolate ganache layer as first, it would need 4 hours for the chocolate ganache to firm up (I did not have much time left) and second, I did not have any more space left within the cake ring to accomodate the chocolate ganache layer. Will remember to slice the chocolate sponge cake layer thinner next time.

My son, hubby and I had a wonderful dinner at the Majestic Restaurant. (Daughter was away in Osaka holidaying with her aunts and cousins.) It serves Chinse fusion food and we ordered the degustation menu so that we can sample their signature dishes in small amount. Food was good and it came with desserts too. Speciality was the fried durian icecream. It's yummylicious. My son and I had this while hubby had the mango pomelo. We were all filled up to our chest. And we still have the minature birthday cake I made back home. We couldn't put any more food into our mouths and so we all shared just one piece of the cake. Oh my! It was good and both hubby and son loved it too. It tasted even better the next day as the coffee and peanut butter flavour got more infused into the mousse. Yum ............. Will definitely bake this again for friends and relatives to try.

Recipe taken from Daily Delicious.