Hello ladies and Gentlemen of the forum:

I’ve been away from the kitchen for a bit, and haven’t really been posting.  Life, unfortunately gets in the way.  But I’m back.  The other day I decided to make the White Chocolate whisper cake with strawberry mousseline (one of my favorite combinations.)  I make strawberry mousseline a lot, I love it, but it is very time consuming.  (Defrost the berries, collect the liquid, boil it down, puree…blah blah blah)  I remembered in the new book, in the recipe for Miette’s Tomboy (spelling?) that rose suggests adding raspberry jam to mousseline…so i figured I’d try it with strawberry jam.  i made a small cake.  1/2 recipe of mousseline and added 140g of seedless strawberry jam.  it was delicious.  Not as good as when made with puree, and a little sweeter, but sooooo much easier and faster.  I don’t know if I’ll give up on making the puree completely, but when in a rush…this is a super easy alternative.

No picture…the cake looked like all my others…Ridged on the sides with an icing comb and a shell border.

Yipee, Bill is back! 

Thanks so much for reporting on the Jam version of mousseline, I bet it would be perfect for kids’ cupcakes, or anyone who enjoys a little extra sweetness.

Just made my first batch of Bill’s chocolate IM buttercream, and I must say it was just lovely.  Perfectly chocolate-y without being either too mild or too intense.  I tweaked it a bit by adding a small amount of boiling water to the cocoa, just enough to melt it and allow it to be whisked smooth.  The resulting buttercream was softer than the white chocolate which I made with the same base batch of mousseline, but it still held up well and was wonderful to eat.  It was for marble cupcakes (kids bake sale), I’ll post pics separately.

Hi, Bill!  Thanks for the jam info!  My guess is that since it was almost as good as the puree, you can find a jam that will make it just as good! I’m making some strawberry mousseline myself in July, and I plan to use freeze-dried fruits and powder them.  I might to 1/2 with freeze-dried fruits and 1/2 with jam and compare, as the freeze-dried fruits are quite expensive.  Another possible is use the jam, but add some freeze-dried strawberries to make it more strawberry/less sugar. 

I just used freeze-dried bananas them to make banana mousseline, and it worked wonderfully, but it took $9 of freeze dried bananas for 6c of mousseline (about 1/2 oz FD bananas per cup of mousseline)!! 

Thanks again for the tasting tip, as this might be the way to go if the desired flavor is available in a good jam!

Bill, have you tried using spoon.com fruit butters?  they are low in sugar, high in fruit, and epic on mousseline!  a drop or two of lacuisineus.com french aromes makes it even more epic.

Bill, I’ve tried seedless raspberry jam and it’s good also - worth trying for next time.

When I made miette tomboy this past weekend, I didn’t actually make raspberry sauce. I let the frozen raspberries thawed in a collander overnight then strained the raspberries, and added it to the mousseline. That’s it, no boiling bla bla. Taste is really great even w/o the liquid - much better than jam. The liquid from the raspberries becomes sauce for my morning yogurt, .

Jen and Hector:
Both fantastic ideas…thanks!