Chocolate-Orange Mousse Cake

Name: Chocolate-Orange Mousse Cake
Yield: Serves 12 to 16 (Makes one 9-inch cake)
Ingredients: 12 tablespoons, unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), cut into 12 pieces; 1 teaspoon, unsalted butter, softened, for greasing pan; , unbleached all-purpose flour for dusting pan; 12 ounces (340 grams), bittersweet chocolate (such as Hershey's Special Dark), chopped; 1 ounce (28 grams), unsweetened chocolate chopped; 1 teaspoon, vanilla extract; 1 tablespoon, orange liqueur; 1 tablespoon, grated orange zest; 8 , large eggs, seperated; 1/8 teaspoon, table salt; 2/3 cup packed, light brown sugar (4 1/2 ounces; 128 grams), crumbled with fingers to remove lumps (see note)

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Appears in Cook's Illustrated November/December 2002

Desserts or Baked Goods

Chocolate

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Cakes

Chocolate mousse cake runs the gamut from fluffy, insubstantial layer cake to dense-as-a-brick, and fudge-like slab. Could we make one that maintained the qualities of a perfect chocolate mousse--rich, creamy, and full of chocolate flavor?

SERVES12 to 16 (Makes one 9-inch cake)

TIME1¾ hours, plus 3 hours cooling and 8 hours chilling

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WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS

The best chocolate mousse cake recipe produces a fudgy, chocolaty, and very rich dessert with a perfect texture. To get the sophisticated flavor we were looking for, we used bittersweet chocolate plus an ounce of unsweetened chocolate for d...

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