Chocolate Raspberry Moelleux

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Print One of the most elegant desserts in French cooking, the moelleux is a chocolate muffin rich like a brownie with a liquid raspberry heart. Incredible! One of the most elegant desserts in French cooking, the moelleux is arich like awith a. Incredible!

The chocolate moelleux [maw-ah-luh] is one of the most chic desserts served in French restaurants. As it arrives on the plate, you could think this is sort of chocolate muffin, but as you open it you realize the content is liquid. Did the chef forgot to bake it through? you ask yourself as you take the first bite. And then it dvelves on you - the core is not uncooked dough, but a delicate chocolate filling. How the hell did they manage to keep the core liquid? When you'll finish reading this article, you'll know how to make this dessert just like a French chef with the simplest equipment and a French chef's trick.

Chocolate-Raspberry Moelleux

A recipe by Pierre Hermé

For the ganache:

125gr raspberries, fresh or frozen

100gr black chocolate (about 67% cocoa content)

30gr cream

For the biscuit dough:

70gr flour

200gr chocolate (about 67% cocoa content)

250gr butter

4 eggs

220gr sugar

Yields about 12 muffin-sized moelleux

The moelleux can be prepared with various stuffings, and you could substitute the raspberries with passion fruits for instance.

Place the chocolate in a bowl floating in a pot of hot water. Melt slowly, making sure no water enters the chocolate bowl. Crush the raspberries in a kitchen mixer.

Filter the raspberries through a sieve to extract 100gr juice. Heat in a small saucepan and add the cream.

Mix the chocolate with the raspberry juice and cream and whip slowly, without adding any air, to combine the ingredients intimately. You have just made a very light ganache [gah-nash], the mixture used by chocolate makers to stuff their chocolates.

Now for the trick that makes this incredible dessert possible. Slowly pour the chocolate-raspberry ganache through a funnel into an icecube bag. You could also use an icecube tray.

This is quite a magical moment to see the dark mixture slowly permeate the bag, colonizing the next cell drop by drop. Just let gravity work for you and wait until the bottom cells are completely filled.

When there is no more ganache left in your funnel, push the ganache down the bag with your fingers so that each cell is equally filled. Tie or use adhesive tape to close the bag and place in the freezer

While the ganache cores hardens up in the freezer we'll prepare a very wet biscuit dough. Work the butter with a spoon until it is soft. Work the sugar into the butter.

Melt the chocolate like explained above and add the to the sugar-butter mixture.

Add the eggs and mix.

Finally add the wee bit of flour this recipe calls for. As you can see, this is a very wet dough.

Buy the best raspberry jam you can find, if possible with the seeds. Here is one I buy from a lady at my local farmer's market who makes it with her own raspberries.

Heat the oven to 170°C and take out a wire rack. Bring the icecube bag out and check for hardness.

You can use small cake pans but I prefer muffin pans, so that each guest receives his own moelleux. If you have a pastry bag fill it with the biscuit dough and fill each muffin pan to about a third of its height. You can also use a spoon to fill the pan but it will be longer and more messy.

Carefully place one teaspoon raspberry jam in the center of the third-filled pans.

Cover with a ganache ice cube.

Finish with the remaining biscuit dough to cover the icecubes. It quite crucial for the icecube to be placed right in the middle for if it does not you will have a hole - see hereafter. Bake in the oven for about 14 minutes.

Remove from the oven and leave for about 10 minutes to cool before you unmold.

Now is the most crucial moment. You have to make sure the ganache filling will neither escape from the top nor from the bottom (like this). Unmold on foil or a plastic sheet.

Cut the foil around the moelleux and carefully lay them on individual serving plates. When done, remove the foil by sliding it carefully from under the moelleux.

The biscuit is soft, rich and velvety but the core is just pure happiness - rich but not fat, chocolatty and fruity at the same time. This is one elegant dessert for a romantic dinner. Tell her/him you saw this on FXcuisine.com!