Daring Bakers: Biscuit Joconde Imprime/Entremet

When you look at the title of this blog post you probably had the same thought as me - what the heck is a Biscuit Joconde Imprime/Entremet? Since I am not a pastry chef and I am not French I will just post the definitions given to me.

A joconde imprime (French Baking term) is a decorative design baked into a light sponge cake providing an elegant finish to desserts/torts/entremets/ formed in ring molds.

Entremets (French baking term)- an ornate dessert with many different layers of cake and pastry creams in a mold, usually served cold.

This was probably one of the most stressful desserts I have made. I think part of the reason for that is the lack of direction. All of the daring bakers challenges have a lot of room for you to make creative decisions but this one left it totally open on what you put in it. The second thing that makes it a little stressful is the fact that it is one of those desserts that you have no idea if it came out until you un-mold it in front of your guests.

After seeing some of the other bakers completed challenges I finally decided what I would do. I was going to have a dinner with a few kids so I decided it would be fun to make individual desserts and put everyones initial as part of the design. My three year old is really into seeing the first letter of his name (and was even a little upset that his letter is not being used in this post). I used some 2 1/2 PVC pipe as the mold for the dessert to make kind of a narrow/high dessert.

For fillings I did the following (in order):

1. daquoise - a kind of meringue cookie
2. pomegranate bavarian mixed with a little cream cheese to make a kind of "cheesecake" layer
3. lemon curd lightened with a little whipped cream
4. pomegranate gelee

On the side is one of the daquoise along with some whipped cream, pomegranate reduction, and some pomegranate seeds.

I'm not going to give my recipes since they were kind of improvised and I am not really sure I could reproduce them. If anyone really wants more info on any of the layers let me know and I will do my best. I do have recipes for some of the layers.

I was actually surprised at how good these turned out. I liked all of the layers and the flavors went well with each other. My cake was about 1/4 inch thick - which I think was a little thick for such a small diameter dessert but I still managed to get it to work. The three year old girl who got the "M" dessert in the above picture absolutely loved hers and gobbled up the whole thing. At the end she thanked me for making a dessert with her initial on it. The honesty of children is so nice (when they like it).

Here is the challenge that contains the recipes for the cake along with different ideas for the fillings. Thanks to Astheroshe at accro for this months challenge. Astheroshe graduated from Culinary school as a pastry chef (just for fun) a few years ago and you can definitely tell by looking at her blog - so many good looking desserts.

One other note - I decided to finally join Daring Cooks. Daring Cooks is the sister site to Daring Bakers so it is the same time of thing - just with non-dessert items. So far I have just been doing the baking part. Since Barefoot Bloggers changed their format I have not really participated in that so I decided it was time to try something new. It should be a nice challenge.